Ahmad Shah Durrani

Count Ossie (Oswald Williams, 1926 - 1976).

One of the first musicians rastas, this percussionnist of the group “ Mystic Revelation off Rastafari ” represents one of the symbols jamaïcains throughout the world.

With Prince Buster, it belongs to the artists who led to the emergence of the Ska, which is illustrated in the book Bass Culture.

Biography

Born in Bito (located near to Bull Bay, parish of Saint-Thomas) in March 1926, it is interested very quickly in the music and fact part of the brass band of the scouts, in which it plays of the drum and the fifre. At the beginning of the the Forties, his/her mother decides to settle in Rockfort (district is of Kingston), where it will pass its adolescence and will enter another Fanfare of scouts, " the Holy savior Troop" Cal;. Its passion for the drums and the discussions rastas often involves it in Salt Lane, in the west of Kingston.

Towards the end of the year 1940, in the camp of Salt Lane, where finds itself in addition to the community rasta, the community Burru, Count Ossie, initiated by the Master drum Brother Job, thinks of a Musique which can be characteristic of the movement rastafarien and it was to take as a starting point the music of old Burrus which struck drums at the rate/rhythm of their heart and becomes thus the founder of the true music rasta: the Nyahbinghy .

It creates in 1947 the group Mystic Revelation off Rastafari in order to make perdurer the tradition. In 1951, it opens a camp rasta in the east of Kingston, the community of Rennock Lodge where come to play of the hundreds of musicians of Jamaica among which Tommy McCook, Don Drummond, Johnny " Dizzy" Moore, Roland Alphonso, Rico Rodriguez.

From 1961, it takes part, with its group of five percussionnists The Warrickas, with many sessions of recording of ska. It is in particular credited on famous the (Oh) Carolina with the Folkes Brothers (under the name of “Count Ossie Afro-Combo”). It is rewarded with the festival for arts for Jamaica in 1965 and 1966.

In 1966, he plays with his group on the landing strip to accommodate Hailé Sélassié on his arrival in Jamaica.

It is in 1970 qu ' it approaches Mystics, the group of Cedric Brooks, for some sessions. The union of coppers and low the jazz of Mystics combined with the percussions leads to an amazing result. They leave then in round together to Guyana, North America and Europe before recording off two albums of the Mystic Revelation Rastafari. After having collaborated in many albums of reggae, Count Ossie dies in an car accident on October 18th, 1976.

Discography

  • Grounation , 1973 (triple album vinyl, double CD)
  • Bruise Off Mozambique , 1975
  • Remembering Count Ossie: In Rasta Reggae Legend , 1996

See too

Internal bonds

External bonds

  • the official site of Mystic Revelation off Rastafari
  • Rastalogie

Bibliographical sources

  • Lloyd Bradley, Low Culture, When the reggae was king , ED. Combined, 2000.
  • article of Bruno Blum in the Dictionnaire of the Rock'n'roll , under the direction of Michka Assayas, ED. Robert Laffont, coll Books, Paris, 2001.
  • Yannick Marshal, the Encyclopedia of Reggae 1960-1980 , Alternate Editions, 2005, Paris.

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