INTERVIEW : BRONCO KNOWLEDGE
Interview by : Sébastien Jobart
Pictures by : DR
on Wednesday, May 23rd 2012 - 13 234 views
Trenchtown, Jamaica. The Kingston neighbourhood is the epicentre of the rasta rebellion. Joe Higgs, Delroy Wilson, Alton Ellis, Leroy Smart, Bunny Wailer, Bob Marley… all of them grew up between 1st and 7th Street, sung about by Bob Marley in Natty Dread. It is also where the members of Knowledge grew up: Michael Smith, Anthony Doyley, Earl "Rockman" McFarlane, Michael Samuels… and Delroy "Bronco" Fowlin. The last member of the group still active, Bronco Knowledge left Trenchtown in 2000 to settle in England, before moving on to France.
Bob Marley, Claudie Massop, Tappa Zukie, Bunny Lee, Haile Selassie… Bronco Knowledge turns back time. Knowledge is a weapon and Bronco knows it well. Asked a question, he delivers the whole story, with its protagonists and its details. Enough to turn an article into a manuscript...
Reggaefrance / All the members of Knowledge come from Trenchtown. Had you known each other since childhood?
Bronco Knowledge / We went to school together, we played football together, until the moment we adopted Rasta principles and started wearing dreadlocks. We were young Rastas from Trenchtown, a part of Kingston where there were many artists who all lived together, back in the 60s and especially the 70s: Bob Marley, Bunny Wailer, Peter Tosh, Joe Higgs, Dennis Brown, Toots, Delroy Wilson, Ken Boothe, Leroy Smart... Many artists come from Trenchtown... It was a big influence on Knowledge.
How did you learn music?
I've loved music since I was a child. Before being a singer, I was a dancer from the age of 13. I had a group of dancers, Firing Squad. We competed against other dance groups. We changed our name to Scorpion Dance Group, then Roach Dance Group. We won lots of medals in competitions and festivals, it was the time of Jamaica's independence (whose 50th anniversary is being celebrated this year, Ed.). That was a long time ago, well before Bogle started dancing. He loved the way we danced. When we stopped dancing to go into music, Bogle carried on dancing and won his popularity. When we were young and going to school, my favourite singer was Bob Marley. I loved listening and dancing to his songs, for example Simmer down. Of them all, the Wailers remain my favourite singers. They dug so deep into the roots... I loved dancing, but I told myself that if I could dance and sing...
In 1973, I was the first of all those young Rastas to buy a guitar. I learned to play it with Vincent Ford, we call him Tata, he's the one who wrote No Woman No Cry. All of us together under the mango tree... That's how I learned. We were determined to get serious. We wanted to record, but we had no opportunity. And we didn't especially push to make it happen. We weren't doing it for glory. We loved singing and playing music, that was enough for us at the time.
Back then, we didn't buy anything from the shop, if we needed water we went to fetch it from the river. We walked from Kingston to Westmoreland, it took us 7 days and 7 nights. We were very close. But Anthony and Rockman left our syndicate and teamed up with Michael Smith and Michael Sammers. They formed a group and asked me to join them. Because with Tata, we had already sung Hail Dread and Population know it all together before forming the group Knowledge. We started rehearsing together, but we didn't have a name yet.
In the end it was Tappa Zukie who produced your first album...
One day, a brother called Nigga Charlie introduced us to Tappa Zukie. I had known him for a long time when he hung around Greenwich Farm, but at that time he wasn't into music at all. In the meantime, he had become a producer... Tappa listened, and liked it. We wanted to experience recording music, so we agreed to work with him. The first studio we went to record in was Lee Perry's Black Ark. The first song was Zion we want to go, the first song I sang lead on. Doyley sang the other three: Population know it all, Make faith, What's yours. Sly & Robbie played the riddims... We started recording, and looked for a name. It took us days, months, of discussion. With our cultural songs, we all agreed on Knowledge. We took that name in 1977.
 Je lui ai dit "Claudie [Massop], no disrespect, mais nous sommes de Rema, nous avons grandi à Trenchtown, nous sommes ruff aussi". 
Knowledge's music belongs to the roots rockers style initiated by Bunny Lee and the Aggrovators...
Bunny Lee was the one who inspired Tappa Zukie. He taught him the tricks of the producer's trade. He was the first to give him riddims, and Tappa would go and find artists to sing on them. That's why Bunny Lee liked Tappa so much, as he was always in England to see Fatman... They teamed up. They even both have a thin scar on the face... They were like a father and his son.
Let's talk about the track Let us all, one of Knowledge's great feats.
Let us all wasn't Tappa Zukie's production, it was ours. I'm going to tell you the truth. I'm telling you what I saw, what I know. As Bob Marley said, for some people the truth is an offence, but not a sin. Here it is: when we gave the album to Tappa Zukie in 1977, he went to England to see the record company A&M. We were the first black artists signed to them. They were happy with this album. At that time in England you could see big advertising billboards for Knowledge.
And then there's this famous rudeboy, Claudie Massop (JLP gunman, he co-organised the Peace Concert in 1978 with Bucky Marshall, Ed.). Claudie Massop saw Tappa Zukie going off to England, bringing back money, driving a BMW. He dug around a bit and found out that this album signed to A&M could make him money. That's what caused our split. Many producers are like that: they come to you, a young ghetto sufferer, they see your potential, they listen to your good music. Then they make you fine promises, make money from your music, and you can't even feed your family. At the beginning, Tappa Zukie wasn't Mr Want-it-all. But when we were signed, he became a dog that wouldn't let go of his bone, and all we had as payment was pocket money. He told us lies.
Claudie Massop came back from England and thought he could look after us better than Tappa Zukie thanks to his rudeboy connections. He brought us to Tivoli Gardens. He was a serious man who listened to people. I listened to his proposals. He could find us shows, groups to rehearse with, like the dance group New Vibration... The other members of Knowledge didn't have the strength to speak, because they were afraid. I wasn't afraid and I spoke. I said: "Claudie, you are a big man, and if we worked for you, you would be like a Don to us, we couldn't let you down. But you don't swap one evil for a worse one. Claudie, no disrespect, but we are from Rema, we grew up in Trenchtown, we are ruff too. We are leaving Tappa Zukie because of his corruption, and we don't want to go elsewhere without being sure that everything is sorted". He laughed and said: "I understand. Watch out for Tappa Zukie because he makes a lot of money, but it won't come back to you." He warned us, and that's how we left Tappa and started producing ourselves. As we say back home, "Every mickles make a muckle" ("small streams make great rivers") but what he gave us was really "a likkle mickle", monkey money. With that we were able to produce our second album, "Judgement". And that's how Let Us All is our production.
Once again, it's a powerful lyric and...
(He cuts in) What the track says, "Let us all stand up and try not to fall", is what we were thinking: we wanted to finish the album and go and see A&M ourselves, without going through Tappa Zukie. But strange things happened at that time. The money we had to make the album wasn't enough. We went to see our brother Bob Marley so that he would lend us money, 10,000 JAM$, to finish the album. But it was a strange answer that we got from him, he who was our elder in the music industry. We didn't think Knowledge could be a threat to anyone, because we didn't see music as a competition. We wanted to spread the message like the Wailers... Bob told us: "Knowledge, this music thing is a competition". We asked him what he meant. He answered that he would gladly have lent us the money, but that he couldn't afford to let that money make multimillionaires of us and the record company. At the time, he was with Island and Chris Blackwell. And A&M was another record company that could have got rich from our music... At the time, I didn't know he thought what Knowledge played was that good. The musical threat to him, at the time, was Third World.
I was at the National Stadium and I witnessed the clash between Bob Marley and Third World. We were all on Bob's side, as ghetto youths from Trenchtown. He was my idol... I never held it against him, but he was part of the system, the music system. He saw all of that as a competition. We couldn't finish the album. Our relations with him suffered, and with A&M too, because Tappa Zukie no longer cared. He did nothing at all to get us out of there and let us have that money. What he wanted was to lock everything down, so that we would be obliged to go through him and bow to his conditions, which were to give him even more of our music. Of course, we refused, why would we have given even more music under those conditions? We were never able to connect with A&M because he was the only one who knew them. We were kept in the dark. And then one day, that deal with A&M no longer existed.
How did you complete the album?
We forgive, but we don't forget. We kept on seeing Bob. I remember a day at Hope Road when we were there with other young people from Trenchtown. Bob welcomed us because he knew that Trenchtown was his base, that most of his musical knowledge came to him from there. Like Peter Tosh, he wasn't born in the ghetto, he comes from the countryside, no disrespect. Unlike Bunny Wailer, who is a Trenchtowner by birth, whose father lived on 2nd Street, in the same place as Delroy Wilson's parents... It's Trenchtown that made him such a strong and powerful figure in the reggae industry, and he could see our situation and the fact that we needed assistance to do what we wanted to do for Trenchtown. He thought: "In the hard world of the music industry, I wasn't able to help these youngsters as I should have, I'll try now".
That day, Bob Marley said to us: "Knowledge and all the people of Trenchtown, this tour is for you". It turned out to be his last tour, he was leaving for Miami, intending to come back and do something for us. But he never came back. We heard the strange news that he had collapsed on stage, that he was ill and was going to die. We didn't believe it, we thought it was nonsense. Bob Marley cannot die! Nobody believed it. Before that, he had asked Sangie, his faithful sidekick, to go and see Rita Marley so that she would give us money. Sangie came and told us himself in Trenchtown. We were glad to hear it. We went back to Hope Road to see them, Sangie and Rita. I don't like talking about this truth, I know it can hurt, but we were just sorry that he had died. Rita asked Sangie "How do you know about this?" Sangie, who had been at his bedside, confirmed to us that Bob really did intend to give us that money. Diane Dobson, who accompanied him on tour, also confirmed it to her. Rita told us she had to go to Miami to hear it from Bob's own mouth. I don't hate her, because I am not governed by hatred. We were embarrassed, because we were mostly thinking of his health, not the money... We wanted him to recover and be able to continue his tour. Rita went over there, and Sangie came back 15 days later, telling us that Rita had heard nothing of the kind from Bob. Anyway, in the meantime, his eyes were already closed... It was so tragic.
We didn't dwell on that money business, it wasn't the time. In any case, we wouldn't have accepted it in those circumstances. We were at rock bottom. I sat on the wall of 1st Street (Culture Yard, where Bob grew up, which he sings about in No Woman no cry, Ed.) and that's where I wrote the track First Street Rock, on 12 May 1981 (the day after Bob's death, Ed.). Life is what matters most, you have to keep good deeds in mind, and set grudges aside. We struggled, struggled and struggled to make this album, "Judgement". Too late to be able to close a deal with A&M... We produced it all together, as Knowledge.
As Rastas, how did you experience the political context?
We were caught between two rival political camps. It was dangerous. Rastas don't support politicians, don't get involved in politics, don't vote. Politicians used the Rastas and abused them. By choosing their songs for political ends, for their campaigns, like Max Romeo's, they put them in danger. The PNP used a Max Romeo song, the JLP used a Bunny Wailer song. Because the Rastas didn't want to be politically involved, they got beaten up, had their dreads cut off... Rastas were marginalised. They struggled to find work. As Sugar Minott sang: "No vacancy, can't get a job!". Rastas suffered because society refused to accept them. You wear locks, you read the Bible, you believe in Selassie, they're not interested... What they want is for you to support their system, and that one only.
It was the same for Bob. The politicians wanted him to do a concert for them. But he is a Rasta too and he would never have done a concert to support politicians. He opposed that idea, so they sent their henchmen to gun him down at his home, at Hope Road. I'm not afraid to say the names, it's politicians like Edward Seaga and their henchmen who are behind it... They thought Bob Marley would eat out of their hand. When he refused them that favour, they wanted to have him killed. But they didn't kill him, and he made a song out of it, Ambush in the night. With all that animosity, he could no longer stay in Trenchtown, as leader of the Rasta community, without risking his life. That's also why they wanted to kill him, thinking that Rasta would die with him. Bob Marley had the money, the means to go and live elsewhere. We didn't have that luck. We had to fight that politics, endure the violence done to Rastas. We were beaten by the police, by the politicians... The police kill, and so do the politicians.
In 1978, there was that Peace Concert. We come back to that story with Bucky Marshall and Claudie Massop. Bob Marley found himself involved in this concert at the National Stadium, where he joined the hands of Edward Seaga and Michael Manley. On one side you had Claudie Massop, Carl "Byah" Mitchell and Jim Brown for the JLP, and on the other side, Bucky Marshall and Tony Welch for the PNP. Claudie Massop had started to grow his dreads, to embrace the Rasta cause. But the police didn't like that. They arrested him as he was coming back from Caymanas Track (Kingston's racecourse, Ed.) with friends, and they killed them all. You can't imagine how many bullets they fired at him... (reports speak of more than 40 hits, Ed.). I heard it was the politicians who were behind this assassination, because Claudie Massop was changing and turning his back on them. He allowed himself to make remarks, he asked for the pressure on the Rastas to be eased. They couldn't stand that he supported an organisation other than theirs. He certainly knew a lot of secrets and that's why they killed him...
I still remember, at the time of that Peace Concert, playing a football match with Bob Marley, at Tivoli Gardens. It was a very enjoyable moment, organised by Claudie Massop, Jim Brown, and Byah. The match pitted Bob Marley's Trenchtown House of Dreads against the Tivoli rude boy team... We smoked the best herb, much better than the rude boys'... As the match went on, they replaced their players, but we kept the same team. Bob Marley scored the first goal of the match, then the third, and I scored the fourth. Massive Dread scored the next one: we were leading 5-0 when Tappa Zukie, who was playing on the rude boys' side, pulled one back. He was our producer, but he was a baldhead, he couldn't play with the Rastas; besides, he was proud to play for those guys, he felt important. The match ended 5-1. He, who had scored the only goal for the rude boys, got shot by his own teammates: Jim Brown, Byah and Claudie. Those guys love war, political trouble. They're the same ones who tried to gun him down. They were mixed up in dirty business... They fell out and shot him. I'm not afraid of the truth. I wouldn't be the first to die for telling the truth. Even knowing the character, I offered him my support.
Tappa Zukie came to recover at my place. He slept at my house, I prepared ital food for him. I think he remembers it but isn't aware of everything we did for him. Maybe he wouldn't talk about it, but I do. He arrived in Trenchtown wounded, he collapsed and told us that Spar, from Tivoli Gardens, had shot him. I don't know for what reasons. In fact, he was shot twice by the Tivoli guys. The second time, Byah personally admitted that he was the one who shot him.
I knew Jim Brown, and his son Dudus. I used to sell him roots, which have fertilising and medicinal properties. Jim Brown and Dudus were dangerous men. Bucky Marshall, Tony Welch too... In the political fraternity, they are all dangerous. The 70s were dangerous for Rastas. Today, many Rastas can't imagine what we went through. They have never been beaten black and blue or even shot for saying "Jah Rastafari"! They didn't go to prison for it. We kept our faith, and fought in that Armageddon. The Wailers, Burning Spear, Third World, Joe Higgs... all those artists fought.
You left Trenchtown and Jamaica at the age of 44. Why leave for England?
Well, things were hard for Rastas. And then, the death of Robert Nesta Marley... They talk about cancer, but I don't believe it, I believe they killed him because he was a messenger. He was a prophet, who opened people's eyes, on an international level. Respect also to Burning Spear, who sings so many songs about Marcus Garvey... And then there's something else... Bob Marley was called the King of Reggae, and I agree 100%, in my heart and mind I'm happy about it. But when he died, how could they take a deejay who only sang slackness and crown him King of Reggae? How could Yellowman be King of Reggae? It's madness! There's nothing cultural about it, and it had a terrible impact on the music industry, which became corrupted. Other deejays arrived, with rubbish music. They acted as if they had invented dancehall, but dancehall existed before, there was a cultural dancehall. (He sings Bunny Wailer's Ram Dancehall). After Yellowman came Ninjaman, Shabba Ranks...
So it was artistic considerations that made you leave Jamaica?
Not necessarily artistic, but the idea of spreading this cultural message across the world. Jamaica had become too small. I must say that the corruption began before Ninjaman and Shabba Ranks. I don't really hold it against Shabba. He sang about girls, and the girls liked it. But Ninjaman arrived with his gun thing, and the rudeboys liked it. With Supercat, it started to become dangerous, then Bounty Killer and Vybz Kartel... For me it's no longer reggae, it's hypocrisy, stupidity, a bad example for the youth... "I shoot you in the morning and in the evening, your mother this and your father that..." It's stupid! And very negative. That's why I left. I was writing songs and I wanted to extend my music to the whole world. I left Jamaica on 15 August 2000.
And you arrive in London...
On arriving in England, I was invited to a Rasta House in Kennington, in south London (demolished in 2007, Ed.). Two organisations were based in that house: EWF (Ethiopian World Federation) and RI (Rasta International). We did a lot to support their activities financially. All that money was supposed to go towards building in Shashamane, in Ghana, in Guinea... in that kind of place. So I supported them. But I discovered they weren't straight, they were keeping money in their pockets. I had to leave that house. I went to Bristol, but what I saw there didn't please me, the youths were too negative. So I left for Bath, to Fairfield House. That house was the home of Haile Selassie, my God, my King, my Messiah. It's where he lived in 1936 when Mussolini invaded Ethiopia (until 1940, Ed.). It was good for me to leave London and go to Bath. That house gave me strength, and allowed me to learn a great deal about His Majesty. Even though life was hard and uncertain, I still wanted to make music.
I was taken to a studio, and that's where I met my wife, Clotilde. I asked her to do backing vocals on my music. We got on very well, we rehearsed together... When she found herself out on the street, she told me she would follow me wherever I went. I realised her love and since that day we have never been apart. We married in 2004. I carried on making music, I made an album, "Tell me something", distributed by Jet Star, but at that time they were going bankrupt. We couldn't get the exposure we wanted for that album. I bought back 1,000 copies and sold them at my concerts, that's how I paid my rent and bills. We decided to leave England. Reggae no longer sounded like the music of Burning Spear and Bob Marley, it was influenced by punk and hip-hop or whatever. We decided to settle in France, where people love reggae.
That's where you recorded the album "More Knowledge for the people", released last year.
We recorded the album near Paris, with some of the best musicians. Some of these songs had already been written and recorded, but not necessarily the way I wanted. I wanted to make an album with an acoustic sound, so when I arrived in France, we redid those songs. The musicians listened to what I asked of them. I would pick up the bass, the guitar or the keyboard to show what I wanted. Because I know what I'm doing!
Are you already working on a new album?
Yes, I'm working with the musicians from Noise Zion. This album will be called "Still more knowledge for the people". And the next one after that will be called "The Revelation of knowledge", because I already have lots of songs. But we're concentrating on the next album. It's important to do things one at a time.
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