That Every Mouth Can Be Fed: Remembering the Extraordinary Desmond Dekker

By Patrick J. Walsh
Eating. Not one of the ‘usual’ places, but an okay option for a hot meal on a cold night.

The food was good. It served well as the catalyst for the larger experience of sharing a meal — the sharing being the more important part, providing the context and meaning, while the food itself provided an opportunity to enjoy someone else’s enjoyment of eating as much as I would the taste of the food on my own plate.

Toward the end of the meal, a little bubbling of chatter on the radio, the other tables a little more sparsely populated, the last of my coffee losing its heat at the bottom of the thick ceramic mug. A brief quiet in the flow of the conversation; and then the first familiar emanations of an irreplaceable presence in the soundscape...

Desmond. Desmond Dekker. “Israelites.”

By that particular point, it had been somewhat more than 15 years since I had seen Desmond Dekker perform live, and more than five since he passed away, on May 24, 2006.

Desmond Dekker at 7 Willow Street,
Port Chester, New York, 05/26/95.

He had been in his late 20s when “Israelites” first made its way from his homeland in Jamaica into the pop radio airwaves of the late 1960s, and then into the top 10 of the U.S. charts and to #1 in the UK — according Desmond the honor of being the first Jamaican musical artist to enjoy international commercial success with a song that was entirely a product of his own culture. As such, it was also the first taste of a marvelously vibrant musical milieu for a generation of listeners in the United States and Europe.

In the mid 1990s, when I stood swaying in the animated darkness of 7 Willow Street in Port Chester alongside some friendly fellow travelers who were equally enwrapped in the experience, as Desmond shared the mystic heart of the composition that had at that point defined the course of his life and career for more than two decades, he was in his mid 50s.

And in 2006, when he suffered the heart attack that would claim him for the choir of a higher stage, he was 64. It is an age that seems very young for dying, for an individual of such energy and spirit.

Fortunately, for those not fortunate enough to have encountered Desmond during his lifetime, as well as those who simply wish that he was still here, the energy and spirit of the man is well reflected in his life’s work.

As his signature song and as the nominal starting point for anyone foraging for information about his music, “Israelites” provides a telling example of the kind of small miracle that occurs whenever Desmond Dekker’s music is embraced by a non-Jamaican audience.

The song’s journey, like that of the artist and his audience, is evidence of the unlikeliest sort of conveyance, from an intensely singular vision imbued with the particulars of its time and style and character, to the far reaches of the world, where it is often embraced even by those who are themselves surrounded by styles and statements that are utterly foreign — and even antagonistic — to its own nature.

Even for the most earnest American ear, it is the kind of composition whose basic elements are as difficult to grasp as those of a Gregorian chant or a hymn in Latin — but equally rewarding, for those willing to listen.

Those interested in the etymology of the song’s title will likely come across descriptions of a particular group of “Israelites” — a local sect of the time whose belief system blended elements of Christianity and Rastafarianism. Whether the name of the song is derived from observation of that particular group or from the Biblical Israelites is probably less important than to simply note the obvious comfort Desmond displays with Biblical ideas and imagery in many of his songs (“Honour Your Mother and Father,” for example, was one of his most popular early compositions).

As a whole, the lyrics express the songwriter’s empathy for the displaced and downtrodden in his own mid-century homeland, and in his vocal performance and musical accompaniment, their bleak outline of the struggles of the poor are elevated into a universal anthem of shared experience.

The lyrics are drenched in the Jamaican idiom, and are likely to be interpreted by an American audience more in snippets of phrases than as entire ideas, initially leaving half-formed impressions in the fashion of a watercolor or an epic poem.

Details filled in by subsequent listening, however, reveal very concrete, carefully observed descriptions of the heartaches of deprivation and poverty: the hardest work for the lowest pay, the disintegration of family life, the empty pocket leading to the empty stomach, the worn clothes leading to the loss of dignity, the suspicion of one’s fellows following the suspicion of one’s own self as desperation gives way to temptation — these themes are each struck in the succession of brief lines, with the whole presenting a vividly impressionistic observation of the experience of being poor.

The musical environment for such observation also presents a challenge to anyone unfamiliar with its genre or genesis. Like many of Desmond’s most formidable compositions, “Israelites” is characteristic of the mid-1960s shift in Jamaican music that is known as ‘rock-steady’ — a brief period which saw the predominant beat of the island’s music transformed from the fast paced, uptempo ska of the decade’s early years to the languorous, bass-dominated reggae that would emerge at its closing.

While less driven than ska, rock-steady is a bouncy, danceable music; its suitability to lyrics embracing the strife of human suffering may well seem a bit bewildering to the uninitiated. The buoyancy of the loping beat of “Israelites” could cause the mind to wander, were it not for the remarkable vocal performance that Desmond brings to the song. His exquisite tenor is the kind of voice that, heard once, remains in the head and the heart like the familiar tones of the greeting of a friend.

The voice and the beat evoke a spaciousness that give the song a broader feeling, expanding it, as it were, to hint at a larger context in a manner similar to the way in which the Biblical allusion at the heart of the lyrics bespeaks the larger experience of all those journeying toward deliverance.

Ultimately, the words and the music and that unmistakable, irreplaceable voice converge to elicit an intense sense of recognition in the plight described in “Israelites,” sounding down the decades from its creation so long ago, during the early days of a new kind of music that emerged largely from the hardest part of life in a place and time that was otherwise abundantly blessed.

Along with the myriad of other recordings that represent the remarkable life and spirit of Desmond Dekker, it is a music that still feeds the soul, even a lifetime after it is first heard.

© 2012 Patrick J. Walsh

For more information:

• The Official Desmond Dekker website: http://www.desmonddekker.com/

Recommended listening:

Exceptional Rhino
Greatest Hits collection.

Early Recordings
anthology.

Uplifting mid-1990s 
compilation.

The Perfect Dive

This weekend I found it: THE dive. The perfect dive -- a venue so complete in its craptacularity that it is difficult to imagine any other place combining so many elements of awfulness and still being open for business.

There was chlamydia in the air, adrift in the looming aroma of sweat and stale chicken wings. Even the gay people were unattractive.

I should note, in all the years I’ve been going out to see live music, I have been to a LOT of different kinds of places. Bars, clubs, shops, storefronts; theaters, concert halls, arenas; backyards and living rooms and churches. And oddly enough, some of the great shows I’ve seen were at places hidden in the dust and shadows of some pretty scary looking neighborhoods. Some of those venues could, I guess, be legitimately called “dives” in the informal dictionary definition; but in each case, the combination of great performance and earnest welcome so outshone the seediness of the surroundings, it hardly mattered that the place was a mess.

But this weekend I came across a bar that truly puts the “less” in “miserableness.”

It’s not so much that it was intrinsically worse than any other similarly appointed hole in the wall; it’s more the way in which this particular place managed to concentrate so much unpleasantness in such a relatively small space, over such a short period of time.

The biggest problem was the phony atmosphere -- the faux pub nonsense that so many bars now employ as a means of plastering over the unrelentingly dismal fraudulence of their decor. Here’s a clue: a veneer finish is supposed to overlay a patina of quality on a piece that is constructed of inferior material -- not just spread the shiny, plasticky awfulness around the entire circumference of the room.

But of course, in this particular case, that wasn’t the only problem. There was also the surly waitstaff; the lousy service; the stale foul smell of the food; the somnambulant bartender; in fact, there were really only two great positives: they book live music, and they have ample parking. Sadly, the second of these great attributes is only due to the fact that most of the stores in the sorry little strip mall where this place is located are already vacant -- and as I pulled away, I thought I could hear the empty retail husks calling out to the bar: “Join us, join us...”

There was a stage, and there were amps; there was a bar, and a few booths. A long wooden barrier separated bar from booth, and was designed to accommodate those who wished to stand and lean while listening to the performance -- or more accurately, to accommodate those who were asked by the waitstaff to vacate the booths if they were not ordering food, or finished with whatever food they had ordered.

It was an interesting approach, to toss customers who have paid a cover charge out of a seat because you assume they’re not willing to order food, and to then fail to direct them elsewhere.

Which, as things turned out, was just as well, given the oddness of the odors surrounding the eating area. It is difficult to delicately describe that peculiar scent; but let me put it this way: when you go over your notes after a show and find that you’ve written the phrase “Smells like urinal cakes” -- twice -- to describe the place’s ambiance, there is definitely something that is just not working in the venue’s approach to customer care.

But the mere odor and unfriendliness were just a start, as those in charge worked hard to live up to the sort of behavior epitomized by the motto Curly Howard spouts in the Three Stooges short “Movie Maniacs” (which just happens to be on TV as I write this): “If at first you don’t succeed, keep on sucking until you do succeed.”

With no clear delineation between the musical performance and the regular melange of bar customers, the sounds of each frequently mixed together in a clot of pure, beautiful song and shouted inanities of introduction and puerile banter. This could have been easily avoided by providing a dedicated area for the music, segregated from the bar, rather than pointlessly segregating the bar from the eating area. As set up, it simply demonstrated how clueless the management is about how to properly present live music.

Meanwhile, the guy standing next to me -- more accurately, in front of me, where he partially obstructed my view of the stage -- was wearing a shirt that sported a logo that seemed to attest to his “toughness.” Except that it was actually a trademarked logo, which I guess actually attested to the toughness of the corporation that had trademarked it. And it was in yellow lettering. And the guy continually, mockingly “threatened” his friend with pretend punches and phony stabs of his pen.

I have seen legitimately tough guys at concerts. I remember the Motorhead show I went to a few years back; the only guys more badass than the ones drinking at the bar were the ones on the stage. And as near as I can remember, none of them were wearing a corporate logo, or pretending to punch anyone.

Of course none of this really mattered, because I got to see what I went there to see: the music that I love, by local artists whose work I admire and respect. In fact, that’s why I decided, as I drove home musing about what I might write, that I would not use the name of the venue. Any place that’s willing to pay local artists to perform deserves some benefit of the doubt, no matter how dubious its hygiene, or rude its personnel, or tacky its decor.

When I’m at a place like that, standing quietly, trying to remain focused on the performer, I take comfort in the thought that as a writer, I always get the last word. Long after the last tone sounds and the lights go dim and the key is turned in the door in the early hours of the following morning, I think back and recount all the dismal little distractions, only to find myself arriving finally, as always, at the sheer gorgeous poetry of having been there to experience the performance. For the way that poetry rings in my heart and my head long after even the longest evening, I am always willing to surmount whatever obstacles might be in my way...

© 2011 Patrick J. Walsh