Interview by : Jah Rebel
Traduction : Irie Nation
Pictures by : DR
on Friday, May 20th 2011 - 7 395 views
The Big Band in the sky now has one more musician. Last Thursday, Lloyd Knibb, drummer and original Skatalite, laid down his arms in his fight against liver cancer that had reached an advanced stage. Our colleagues at Reggae.be had met the musician during the Skatalites' last visit to the Couleur Café Festival in Brussels in 2009. This interview had never been published. This one's for you Lloyd !
Reggaefrance / Lloyd, you are often credited as the inventor of the style of percussion called the Burru style.
LLoyd Knibb / I learned to play burru with Count Ossie. At the time, I played the percussion called the “repeater”. Later, as a drummer, I incorporated some elements of that school into my style. (The history of Jamaica tells us that the slaves brought from Africa a form of percussion called burru. This genre, originating in West Africa, spread through the Caribbean as a result of the slave trade from the 15th century onwards. Burru was often used in arrangements called “talking drums”, probably because of their construction on a plan in which one instrument makes the “call” and another drum answers with the “response”, as in a conversation. This conversation can be heard when one musician plays a series of beats followed by a reply of lively beats from the other percussionist. Call and response is found in almost all music of African origin, Ed.)
Buying instruments is expensive. How did you manage to get your first drum kit?
My first drum kit was made entirely by hand, with wooden panels. The cymbals and the bass drum pedal were made from pieces and drums of metal. It wasn’t easy to play, but at the time, I had to make do.
In the early days of the Skatalites, when you were still mostly a studio band, how were you paid?
We were paid for every track we recorded. It started with one pound (between 1840 and 1969, the Jamaican pound was the country’s official currency, Ed.). We recorded for everyone who called us: Prince Buster, Randy’s, Duke Reid, Beverly’s, and others... There were about ten different studios at the time so it was enough for us to earn our crust. We stayed a studio band until Tommy (McCook, Ed.) came to me one day and said: “Lloydie, you’ve got this brand new beat. Why don’t you form a live band?” Quite simply because I didn’t know how to write music or how to arrange it. So I asked him to join us as leader of the band. Then Tommy asked me what I wanted to call the band. I told him the “Satellites”. At the time, the launch of the first satellite, Sputnik, was on everybody’s lips. But Tommy replied: “No Lloydie, you play ska, call the band the Skatalites!” That first line-up of the Skatalites lasted a year and then we re-formed in 1983 to play the Sunsplash Festival. Now, a lot of the band’s original members have died: Don Drummond, Tommy McCook, Jackie Mittoo, Ronald Alphonso...
 Non Lloydie, tu joues du ska, appelle le groupe les Skatalites ! 
Tommy McCook was one of your friends. What memory do you keep of him?
It’s true, he was a very close friend. After work, we hung out together, we went from club to club. Tommy loved playing jazz, he was a real jazzman. And a very good guy.
As a drummer, you have always been at the back of the band. Did you never miss not being in the spotlight?
Well, I’m one of the creators of the sound called ska. And I played for all the legendary vocalists of the time, from Bob Marley to Toots Hibbert by way of Ken Boothe. That’s enough spotlight for me!
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