The Black Ark was the studio of recording of the musician and producer of Reggae Lee " Scratch" Perry, which was created in 1974 in the house that Lee Perry had bought and in which it lived to the 5 Cardiff Crescent, in the suburbs smart Washington Gardens of Kingston in Jamaica. Electrically, the studio was designed entirely by King Tubby. Although this material was more modern with the opening of the studio, it progressively became obsolete of the years but did not prevent Black Ark from being the framework of the creation and the recording of the most innovative sounds of second half of the years 1970. It comprised a Table of mixing 4 Soundcraft tracks, a tape recorder with Teac band, a module of Delay Echoplex and a module of echo Space Echo Roland coupled to a module phaser.

Musical innovations

An example of the inventiveness of Lee Perry was his capacity to record on a table of recording 4 tracks in a so precise way which it outclassed in sound quality the other Jamaican producers using the last consoles of mixing 16 tracks. It unceasingly combined the tracks to release one and record new sounds from them over. It had as a practice to integrate in its titles of the unusual noises, burying a microphone in bottom of a palm tree to obtain a very low sound by striking the trunk, using noises of broken glass, tears of children, extracts of dialogs TV, or making blow Watty Burnett in a roller of paperboard to simulate a box with " meuh". They are all these techniques and in particular the great number of sound layers which made that the sound of Black Ark is recognizable and single.

The musicians who have work in Black Ark

Many musicians and singers of reggae recorded in Black Ark: Aston " Familyman" Barrett, Carlton Barrett, Boris Gardiner, Sly Dunbar, Robbie Shakespeare, Earl " Chinna" Smith, Augustus Pablo, Pablo Moses, Hugh Mundell, Clinton Fearon and well of others. In addition to to have worked the sounds of many groups and singers of reggae such Bob Marley & The Wailers, The Congos, The Heptones, max Romeo or Junior Byles, Black Ark was the place or the Dub saw many sound innovations initiated by Lee Perry. It is with him that the use of the console as an instrument with whole share developed.

End of Black Ark

In 1979, Lee " Scratch" Perry having already a behavior disturbed since a few years, after his wife had left it, put fire at the studio which had enabled him to create some of the sounds more innovating of its time. According to family members the studio would have been destroyed in 1983 because of an electric problem, after an attempt to rebuild it. Lee Perry often affirmed to him that it had destroyed it because of impure spirits being in the studio (reference to undesirable people which often went to Black Ark).

In spite of the incredible music and vibes magic of the black arch, towards end of the year 70, all was not well to the kingdom of Perry. Freeloaders and vagrants started to type to him on the nerves, and to make music became increasingly difficult.

The sessions of recording-marathons carburized with the ganja and alcohol started to be felt on work. Island Records had regarded some of its greater recordings as insortables. Black Ark also became the target of local gangsters who started to make pressure to obtain money of protection.

The relation between Perry and his wife started to fall of pieces. The polished and less polished requests did not succeed in making leave the " bad herbes" of its garden; soon, Scratch turned to stranger methods to get rid of undesirable the rudeboys. Black Ark reached the point of boiling soon, and a point of nonreturn for Perry.

The black arch had ceased functioning since 1979. Roasted physically, mentally, and spiritually, Lee Perry and its studio fell of pieces. His Pauline wife gives up it, taking the children with it. Perry finds himself on a tightrope between imagination and reality, and the departure of its family seemed to insert it a little more in chaos.

A news and worrying person emerged, and while Perry declared that it was a voluntary step to clean the house of people that he did not want any more around him, the mood of Upsetter was clearly prone concerns. The visitors and the journalists arrived to Lee Perry to find it venerating bananas, vandalisant the studio, and outputting the long ones and violent diatribes. Reels of bands were widespread on the floor, and the apparatuses of recording were almost unusable because of the damage of the water which perfusait through the perforated roof. The formerly powerful studio was now more or less a dump.

In April 1979, Perry received a visit of Henk Targowski, a business manager and the owner of Black Star Liner, a production company and of distribution based in Holland. Targowski wanted to distribute the music of Lee Perry, but was not prepared with the madness which it met in Black Ark. With some associates, Targowski decides to try a rescue operation of the studio, trying to give the studio in operating condition. Financed by Black Liner Star, rebuilding work progressed throughout the year 1980, of the new equipment was ordered and installed. In spring 1980, however, the project of restoration was abandoned, and equips it with Black Star Liner leaves Jamaica for good. What had been carefully rebuilt was vandalisé, dismounted and destroys by Perry.

In 1981, with its life and its studio in ruins, Upsetter leaves Jamaica and spends its New York time, and plays in concerts of local groups of reggae. A series in great concerts takes place, in particular with the Clash in New York in June 1982. Perry turns over then to Jamaica, and starts shortly after to record a new album, " Mystic Star" Miracle;. It seems that after two years of confusion, Lee Perry found the form. However, the disaster was right with the corner of the street.

One morning of 1983, Black Ark Studio was destroyed. The fire made rage in the concrete structure, the temperature inside became so intense that the roof was finally puffed up. The studio, source of part of the most powerful music ever recorded, falls gradually in ruins. " The Black Ark was too black and too dread, " Perry explained later. " Although I would be black, I must burn it, to save my spirit. It was too black. He wanted to me avaler" The burning destruction of the black arch became a point-key in the legend Lee Perry. Lee Perry protested several times that it had burned the studio itself in an access of frustration, but it probable that we never know the precise cause of fire -- if it were lit own hand of Perry or were caused by an electric problem --but the destruction of Black Ark Studio was complete.

Shocks Off Mighty: Year Upsetting Biography http://www.upsetter.net/scratch/biography01.htm Updated and revised from Reggae Rasta Revolution (Schirmer Books, 1997)]

External bonds

• Site Black Ark

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