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grantgoddard · 1 month

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Mister Soul Of Jamaica … and Thamesmead : 1938-2008 : reggae artist Alton Ellis

The first record played on the first week’s show of the first reggae music programme on British radio was a single by Alton Ellis, a magnificent singer/songwriter too often overlooked when reggae legends are named. I immediately fell in love with his soulful voice, his perfect pitch and his beautifully clear enunciation, rushing out to buy ‘La La Means I Love You’ [Nu Beat NB014], unaware it was recorded two years earlier. Like many of Ellis’ recordings, this was a cover version of an American soul hit (despite the label’s songwriter credit), though Ellis distinguished himself from contemporaries by also writing his own ‘message’ songs with striking lyrics and memorable hooks. My next single purchases were noteworthy Ellis originals:

‘Lord Deliver Us’ [Gas 161] included an unusual staccato repeated bridge and lines that demonstrated Ellis’ humanitarian pre-occupations, including “Let the naked be clothed, let the blind be led, let the hungry be fed” and “Children, go on to school! Be smarter than your fathers, don’t be a fool!” Its wonderful B-side instrumental starts with a shouted declaration “Well, I am the originator, so you’ve come to copy my tune?” that predates similar statements on many DJ records.

‘Sunday’s Coming’ [Banana BA318] has imaginative chord progressions, a huge choir on its chorus and lyrics “Better get your rice’n’peas, better get your fresh fresh beans’’ that locate it firmly as a Jamaican original rather than an American cover version. Why does it last a mere two minutes thirty seconds? The B-side’s saxophone version demonstrates how ethereal the rhythm track is and shows off the dominant rhythm guitar riff beautifully. It’s a masterclass in music production.

It was only after Ellis had emigrated to Britain in 1973 that a virtual ‘greatest hits’ album of his classic singles produced by Duke Reid was finally released the following year, entitled ‘Mr Soul Of Jamaica’ [Treasure Isle 013]. I recall buying this import LP in Daddy Peckings’ newly opened reggae record shop at 142 Askew Road and loved every track on one of reggae’s most consistently high-quality albums (akin to Marley’s ‘Legend’). It bookended Ellis’ most creative studio partnership in Jamaica when Reid had to retire through ill health.

What was it that made Ellis’ recordings so significant? Primarily, as the album title confirms, it was that his voice uniquely sounded more ‘soul’ than ‘reggae’, occupying the same territory as Jamaica’s ‘Sam & Dave’-like duo ‘The Blues Busters’. I have always harboured the sentiment that, if he had been able to record in America during the 1960’s, Ellis could have been a hugely popular soul singer there. Maybe label owner Duke Reid shared this thought, having recorded ‘soul’ versions of some of Ellis’ biggest songs for inclusion in a 1968 compilation album ‘Soul Music For Sale’ [Treasure Isle LP101/5]. However, at the time, reggae was a completely unknown genre in mainstream America, so Reid’s soul recordings remained unknown there. [The sadly deleted 2003 compilation ‘Work Your Soul’ [Trojan TJDCD069] collected some fascinating soul versions by Reid and other producers.]

Secondly, Ellis’ superb Duke Reid recordings were backed by Treasure Isle studio house band ‘Tommy McCook & the Supersonics’ whose multitude of recordings during the ska, rocksteady and reggae eras on their own and backing so many singers/groups demonstrated a tightness and professionalism that is breathtaking. Using only basic equipment in the studio above Reid’s Bond Street liquor store, engineer Errol Brown produced phenomenal results for the time, operating a ‘quality control’ that belied the release of dozens of recordings every month.

Finally, Ellis’ recordings displayed a microphone technique that was unique in reggae and demonstrated his astute knowledge of studio production techniques. At the end of lines, he would sometimes turn his head away from the microphone whilst singing a note. Because Jamaican studios were not built acoustically ‘dead’, Ellis’ head movement not only translated into his voice trailing off into the distance (like a train pulling away) but also allowed the listener to hear his voice bouncing off the studio walls. ‘Reverberation’ equipment to create this effect technically was used minimally in studios until the 1970’s ‘dub’ era, so Ellis seemed to have improvised manually. Perhaps he had heard this effect on American soul records of the time?

On one of his biggest songs from 1969, ‘Breaking Up Is Hard To Do’ [Treasure Isle 220], you can hear Ellis use this effect during the chorus when he sings the words “everybody knows”, particularly just prior to the fade-out. It is similarly evident on Ellis’ vocal contribution to the brilliant DJ version of the same song, ‘Melinda’ by I-Roy [on album Trojan TRLS63] recorded in 1972.

The same vocal technique is audible on other songs including ‘Girl I’ve Got A Date’ [Treasure Isle DSR1691] in which Ellis elongates the word “tree” into “treeeeee”, as well as “breeze” into “breeeeeeze”, whilst moving his head away from the microphone.

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I had always been intrigued by Ellis’ recording technique but had not thought anything more of it until, entirely by accident half a century later, I found startling 1960’s footage recorded at the Sombrero Club on Molynes Road up from Half Way Tree, Jamaica. Backed by Byron Lee’s Dragonaires, an uncredited vocal group I presume to be ‘The Blues Busters’ performed their 1964 recording “I Don’t Know” [Island album ILP923] during which one of the duo (Lloyd Campbell or Phillip James) moves his head away from the microphone at the end of lines, similar to what can be heard on Ellis’ recordings.

This started me searching for 1960’s footage of Ellis performing live. Sadly, I found nothing (either solo or in his previous duo with Eddie Parkins as ‘Alton & Eddy’ [sic], similar to ‘The Blues Busters’) to see if he emulated this vocal technique on stage too. For me, it remains amazing that the smallest characteristics audible in a studio recording (particularly from analogue times) can offer so much insight into the ad hoc techniques adopted to overcome the limitations of available technology. The ingenuity of music production in Jamaica during this period was truly remarkable.

Prior to emigration, Ellis had toured Britain in 1967, performing with singer Ken Boothe. Whilst in London, he recorded a single ‘The Message’ [Pama PM707] in which he raps freestyle rather than sings, fifteen years prior to Grandmaster Flash’s hit rap track of the same name, and declares truthfully “I’m the rocksteady king, sir”. Its B-side pokes fun at 'English Talk' that he must have heard during his visit. The backing music is the clunky Brit reggae of the time, but Ellis’ subject matter is fascinating for its innovation.

1971’s ‘Arise Black Man’ [Aquarius JA single] includes the lyric “From Kingston to Montego, black brothers and sisters, arise black man, take a little step, show them that you can, ‘coz you’ve got the right to show it, you’ve got the right to know it”. The verses and chorus “We don’t need no evidence now” are backed by a big choir. It’s a phenomenal tune despite not even having received a UK release at the time. (Was the chorus a reference to Britain's 1971 Immigration Act in which a Commonwealth applicant was "required to present [...] forms of evidence" to "prove that they have the right of abode" in the UK?)

The same year, ‘Back To Africa’ [Gas GAS164] has the chorus “Goin’ to back to Africa, ‘coz I’m black, goin’ back to Africa, and it’s a fact’ backed by a choir once again. There’s an adlibbed interjection “Gonna stay there, 1999, I gotta get there” that predates Hugh Mundell’s seminal song ‘Africans Must Be Free By 1983’.

Again in 1971, Ellis re-recorded his song ‘Black Man’s Pride’ [Bullet BU466], previously made for producer Coxson Dodd [Coxson JA single], with it’s shocking (at the time) chorus “I was born a loser, because I’m a black man”. The verses are a history lesson in slavery: “We have suffered our whole lives through, doing things that they’re supposed to do, we were beaten ‘til our backs were black and blue” and “I was living in my own land, I was moved because of white men’s plans, now I’m living in a white man’s land”. I consider this phenomenal song the direct antecedent of similarly themed, outspoken recordings by Joe Higgs (‘More Slavery’ [Grounation GROL2021]) and Burning Spear (“Slavery Days” [Fox JA pre]) in 1975. If only this Ellis song was as well-known as Winston Rodney’s! [In initial recorded versions, “loser” was replaced by “winner” and the song retitled ‘Born A Winner’.]

I first discovered Ellis’ song ‘Good Good Loving’ [FAB 165] as the vocal produced by Prince Buster for a DJ track by teenager Little Youth on the 1972 compilation album ‘Chi Chi Run’ [FAB MS8, apologies for the language] called ‘Youth Rock’. At the time, I was crazy about this recording, combining a high-pitched youthful talkover with a solid rhythm and Ellis’ trademark voice in the mix. I will be forever mystified as to why the DJ (sounding like Hugh Mundell/Jah Levi) seems to refer to “Cool Version by The Gallows [sic]” in his lyrics!

In 1973, Ellis released the song I never tire of hearing, ‘Truly’ [Pyramid PYR7003], that benefits from such a laid-back rhythm that it feels it could come to an abrupt stop at times. It is one of Ellis’ simplest but most effective songs and has become a staple of reggae ‘lovers’ singers since, employing wonderfully unanticipated chord changes. It sounds like a self-production, even though UK sound system man Lloyd Coxsone’s name is on the label. This should have been a huge hit record!

There are so many more Ellis tracks from this fertile early 1970’s period that make interesting listening, recorded for many different producers and released on different labels. Sadly, no CD or digital compilation has managed to embrace them all. I still live in hope.

After Ellis moved permanently to Britain during his late thirties, he must have struggled in the same way as some of his contemporaries, trying to sustain their careers in the ‘motherland’. Despite UK chart successes, Desmond Dekker, Nicky Thomas, Bob Andy and Jimmy Cliff were very much viewed as one-off ‘novelty’ hitmakers by the mainstream media rather than developing artists. Worse, Ellis had never touched the British charts. Neither did the majority of reggae tracks produced then in British studios sound particularly ‘authentic’ to the music’s audience, let alone the wider ‘pop’ market. Ellis performed at the many reggae clubs around Britain but the rewards must have been limited.

Ellis’ British commercial success came unexpectedly when another ‘novelty’ reggae single shot to number one in the UK charts in 1977. Its story is complicated! The previous year, Ellis’ 1967 song ‘I’m Still In Love With You’ had been covered in Jamaica by singer Marcia Aitken [Joe Gibbs JA pre]. A DJ version by Trinity over the identical rhythm followed called ‘Three Piece Suit’ [Belmont JA pre]. Then two young girls, Althia & Donna, recorded their debut as an ‘answer’ record to Trinity on the same rhythm and named it ‘Uptown Top Ranking’ [Joe Gibbs JA pre]. Other producers released their own ‘answer’ records, rerecording the identical rhythm, all of which could be heard one after the other blaring from minibuses’ sound systems in Jamaica at the time. Unfortunately for Ellis, Jamaica had no songwriting royalty payment system in those days.

I remember first hearing ‘Uptown Top Ranking’ as an import single on John Peel’s ‘BBC Radio One’ evening show. Even once it had been given a UK release [Lightning LIG506], Ellis was still omitted from the songwriting credit by producer Gibbs. Legal action followed and eventually Ellis was rewarded with half of the record’s songwriting royalties (for the music but not the lyrics), a considerable sum for a UK number one hit then. The same track (re-recorded due to producer Joe Gibbs’ intransigence) was then included on an album that Althia & Donna made for Virgin Records the following year [Front Line FL1012] that had global distribution, earning Ellis additional royalties.

Also in 1977, Ellis produced twenty-year-old London singer Janet Kay’s first record, a version of hit soul ballad ‘Lovin’ You’, released on his ‘All Tone’ label [AT006] that, prior to emigration, he had created in Jamaica to release his own productions. Ellis’ soul sensibilities and music production experience inputted directly into the creation of what became known (accidentally) as ‘lovers rock’, a uniquely British sub-genre that perfectly blended soul and reggae into love songs recorded mostly by teenage girls. This ‘underground’ music went on to dominate British reggae clubs and pirate radio stations for the next decade, even pushing Kay’s ‘Silly Games’ [Arawak ARK DD 003] to number two in the UK pop singles chart two years later.

Into the 1980’s and 1990’s, Ellis continued to release more UK productions on his label, including a ‘25th Silver Jubilee’ album [All Tone ALT001] in 1984 that revisited nineteen of his biggest hits, celebrating a career that had started in Jamaica as half of the duo in 1959. I recall Ellis visiting ‘Radio Thamesmead’ in 1986, the community cable station where I was employed at the time. He was living on London’s Thamesmead council estate and was interviewed about his label’s latest releases.

On 10 October 2008 at the age of seventy, Ellis died of cancer in Hammersmith Hospital. He had been awarded the Order of Distinction by the Jamaica government in 1994 for his contributions to the island’s music industry. I continue to derive a huge amount of satisfaction from listening to his many recordings dating back to the beginning of the 1960’s and wish he was acknowledged more widely for his outstanding contributions to reggae music.

Now, when I think of Alton Ellis, I fondly recall my daily car commute into work at KISS FM radio, Holloway Road in 1990/1991 with colleague Debbi McNally, us both singing along at the top of our voices to my homemade cassette compilation playing Alton Ellis’ beautiful 1968 rocksteady version of Chuck Jackson’s 1961 song ‘Willow Tree’ [Treasure Isle TI7044].

“Cry not for me, my willow tree … ‘coz I have found the love I’ve searched for.”

[I have curated an Alton Ellis playlist on Spotify though many significant recordings are unavailable.]

#Grant Goddard #Jamaica #London #lovers rock #music #radio #radio station #Radio Thamesmead #record shop #reggae #Youtube

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remaxelitejm · 4 months

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#remax elite realty #jamaica #real estate agent jamaica #property for sale #house for sale in jamaica

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ground-zero-idiocies · 2 years

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I loved that Dad!Nick short it was really cute. I’m not sure if you write for DiMA and if not you could totally ignore this but if you do could I request DiMA’s reaction to meeting Nick and His Daughter Sole? Please and Thank you💚

i'm not gonna cry writing this. no i'm not.

Ground Zero Idiocies Presents: An Extended (Synthetic) Family

"I've never liked boats. It makes me so damn seasick."

Nick gripped his stomach, trying to alleviate some abstract, robotic pain.

"Dad, you're literally a robot now. How are you possibly seasick?"

Nora looked up from her pistol, which she'd been obsessively polishing on the entire ride up from the Nakano house.

"Doesn't matter. Look, we're almost there. Finally."

Nick pointed at a small sign sticking out from a cloud of fog. In faded letters, it clearly read 'Welcome to Far Harbor'.

"They're really calling this place Far Harbor now? That's uncreative. Remember when you used to take us up here during Spring Break?"

Nora holstered her gun.

"Yeah. You never stopped kvetching about how cold it was."

"Wish the weather was the worst of our problems nowadays."

"Hey now, technically nuclear fallout counts as weather. Kind of."

Nora just laughed, walking to the edge of the boat as it automatically docked on the rickety pier. The driverless boat was a Godsend, since neither Nick or Nora remembered that one summer in Jamaica where they'd all learned, and promptly forgotten, how to sail.

It wasn’t the first time they’d been to Far Harbor, but it was the first time that they’d put the two name clues together. Before, they’d been either too seasick or too drunk to notice or care. Finally, though, they were going to set forth for Acadia.

They’d been constantly warned that the road was filled with dangers and creatures from the beyond, so both Daughter and Dad were kitted out to the max. Rifles, pistols, grenades, axes, netherite hoes, even combat armor.

It really wasn’t that bad. The biggest threat they found along the way was a lone radstag pup, that scrammed after a single warning shot.

After a few hours of walking, the pair finally reached the old observatory. Stepping inside, it was...different than they expected. Having worked for so long with the railroad, the two had expected somewhat of a fortress. Turrets lining the walls, armed guards around every corner, and a reinforced structure built deep beneath the Earth.

Acadia just wasn’t that. People, presumably Synths, crossed to and fro around the observatory, taking little notice of the overdressed human and her early-model dad. That was, except for one man sitting in the center of the observatory dome. His large harness swiveled around towards the door, inviting Nick and Nora to approach.

Slowly, they approached him. Walking down the hallway, taking care not to disturb any of the seemingly haphazardly-placed junk.

“Nick. I never thought I’d see you again.”

Nick turned to Nora, confused. He spoke in a whisper.

“I’ve never seen this man before in my life, but seeing someone your own one-of-a-kind mug on someone else’s face is more than a little disturbing.”

Nora nodded, turning to the strange robot.

“Sorry stranger, but I don’t know what you think you know about my robot Dad. He says he’s never seen you before in his life!”

The strange robot nodded.

“Of course, it might be hard to remember at first. Let me introduce myself. My name is DiMA. I’m the...leader...of Acadia. I use the term ‘leader’ loosely, for everyone here is free to make their own...”

Nick, still shocked at seeing a mirror image of himself, wasn’t exactly keen on hearing a sales pitch.

“Cut the crap, DiMA. I want to know why we share the same face. And why I can’t remember a single thing about you.”

DiMA stared blankly into space for a moment before re-centering his focus on Nick.

“My apologies. I am...your brother. We were both created by the Institute, sister models. I was left as a blank slate - no memories, no personality. You were constructed as a reincarnation of a man, days before his death. I helped you escape the Institute. You helped me.”

Nick immediately started to probe his memory banks for any corroborating evidence. Nick was pretty sure that this Gen 2 with delusions of grandeur was just lying about their shared past - all Nick could dredge up was that he woke up in a dumpster, somewhere in Cambridge. Before that, all was a hazy memory - a fact he’d chocked up to a favor from the railroad. An absence of memory meant an absence of trauma.

“Bullshit. I escaped on my own. I didn’t have any help escaping, that much I can recall. The only family I have is my daughter...Nick’s daughter...it’s complicated. And technically I have a synthetic grandson. I hate to break it to you, but you don’t exactly fit into that family tree.”

Seemingly out of nowhere, Nora pulled her pistol on DiMA.

“Doesn’t matter what it is. I’ve been to the VIM factory. I’ve seen your handiwork, DiMA. Family or not, you’re a murderer.”

DiMA slightly reclined, checking his own memory banks.

“I hate to believe you, but it appears to be true. But, know that I feel great remorse. I despise violence, of any kind. Righteous or not. That is something that you know personally.”

Nora lowered her gun.

“Not to change the subject, but how exactly do you plan on convincing me that we really are related?”

Nick interjected, hoping to somewhat cut the tension.

“I was hoping you would ask that. Please, if you’ll just observe my holotape. It should explain everything.”

DiMA extended his hand, tightly gripping a holotape and placing it into Nick’s. He placed the holotape into a slot on his arm, reading the information it stored in less than a second.

“I suppose...this is not how I expected this visit to go. Here, Nora, you should listen to it.”

Nick attempted to give the holotape to Nora, only to notice a bullet hole blasted straight through.

“No. No. Not again. That man is a liar, a thief, and a fucking murderer, and I am not letting you welcome him into whatever the fuck we’re still trying to figure out!”

A single tear rolled down Nora’s face, followed by a second and a third. Soon, the bright blue top collar of her signature vault suit was temporarily turned a dark shade, close to navy. Soaked with tears of insecurity and fear.

“I’m sorry that you feel that way, but everything I’ve done has only served to further the interests of peace on this island. All I desire is a chance to reconnect with my family. The piece of me that I thought I’d lost the day I relayed away from the dark aluminum halls.”

DiMA took a long, deep breath. Not like he needed to breathe.

“Seaweed, I...”

DiMA had crossed a line.

“Don’t you DARE call me that. It’s not a word that should ever FUCKING touch your lips.”

“I apologize. I only wanted to...”

“You don’t understand. I don’t care what you want. I don’t care that you’re sorry.”

Nick cut in again.

“Jesus Nora, you don’t even know that man! You refused to listen to the holotape, even! What is with this resistance?”

Nora collapsed onto Nick’s shoulder, soaking his coat, too.

“I can’t continue with this...with the pretending that everything is normal...with discovering some new threat, some new place to save, some new tangentially related person to worry about. All I want is to live peacefully. With you, and Shaun, and peace of mind. And I think...I know...that i can’t allow murderous maniacs into that dream. Is that reason enough for you?”

DiMA slipped away, leaving Nick and Nora in the empty observatory. Suddenly, the lively room was quiet.

“It’s a reason. But what you can’t do is push away everyone who comes into your life! DiMA’s made mistakes, yes. But if I may remind you, you were blasting through dozens of raiders when I saw you for the first time. Well, when I saw you for the first time.”

Nick sat quietly, letting Nora’s tear ducts ran dry. Nick’s had emptied hundreds of years prior.

“Do you want to find DiMA?”

Nora nodded.

“Come on. I think he’s just downstairs. Let’s give this another go.”

#I have mixed feelings about this one #I really hate my own writing and this just isn't interesting #fallout #fallout 4 #companions react #short fic #found family

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cbjamaica · 2 years

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scotianostra · 1 year

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On 20th November 1863 James Bruce, 8th Lord Elgin, the Scottish Liberal statesman and diplomat, died.

James Bruce was born in London, his father, the 7th Earl was a controversial figure due to his involvement in the “procurement/theft” of the Parthenon Marbles, to give them their traditional name, you might know them as The Elgin Marbles, anyway I digress again, back to the 8th Earl.

In 1840, following the death of his elder brother, he became the heir to the earldom and in 1841, on the death of his father, succeeded to the title, becoming the eighth earl of Elgin. That same year he was elected Southampton's representative in the House of Commons, but his new earldom brought an end to his parliamentary career. In 1842, he accepted the nomination for governor of Jamaica. During an administration of four years he succeeded in winning the respect of all[. He improved the condition of the Afro-Caribbean workers, and conciliated the white planters by working through them. He remained in this post until 1847. His successful administration led to him being offered the role of governor general in British North America, which he fulfilled between 1847 and 1854. During his time there, Elgin took the first steps in establishing a “responsible government” in Canada.

This led to him becoming the first Canadian governor to distance himself from legislative affairs, leaving the real power of government to the elected representatives of the people and paving the way for the Canadian general governorship's essentially symbolic role today.

In 1857 as High Commissioner to China. While visiting China and Japan in 1858 and 1859, he oversaw the end of the Second Opium War but in doing so he ordered the destruction of the Old Summer Palace (the ruling Qing dynasty's residence and seat of government), near Peking (today Beijing),destroying thousands of priceless works of art, in order to intimidate the emperor and force him to sign an unratified treaty. Troops hurriedly looted the imperial collections in the palace, before the Old Summer Palace finished burning. The treaty ended up with China being forced to cede what became Hong Kong, to Britain in “perpetuity“

According to historian Olive Checkland, Lord Elgin "was ambivalent about the British imperial policy of forcing trade on the peoples in China and Japan. He deplored what he called the 'commercial ruffianism' which effectively determined British policy responses."

In a letter to his wife, in regard to the bombing of Canton, he wrote, "I never felt so ashamed of myself in my life."

It all leaves a bad taste in my mouth I deplore the British Empire and all it’s sins it inflicted on the world.

He subsequently became postmaster-general in the Palmerston cabinet and in 1862 was made viceroy of India. He died in He subsequently became postmaster-general in the Palmerston cabinet and in 1862 was made viceroy of India.

He died in Dharmsalas, Punjab of a heart attack while crossing a swinging rope on this day 1863, while still in office, he is buried in the churchyard of St. John in the Wilderness in Dharamshala. Bruce's legacy is several areas of Canada and India have the names Elgin or Bruce, he also has a bridge ion Singapore and a street in Victoria, Australia, and Hong Kong named after him.

While China has opened up to French relations, the sale of Chinese art and artifacts in British auctions remains a point of tension between London and Beijing. All zodiac animal heads from the Summer Palace that have been found have returned to Chinese museums, however.

#Scotland #scottish #anglo-scottish #history #canada #china #jamacia #india #Japan #british empire

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writemarcus · 2 years

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‘A Strange Loop’ Takes a Victory Lap That Was Years in the Making

When he put ‘Broadway’ in a song lyric, Michael R. Jackson was unwittingly naming the destination, and the destiny, for his unapologetically Black and queer musical, which won the Best Musical Tony last night.

BY MARCUS SCOTT

On a cloudy Wednesday morning, less than a week before he was to make his overdue, pandemic-postponed Broadway debut, musical theatre writer Michael R. Jackson was scrambling. His idiosyncratic, existential, metafictional musical A Strange Loop was days away from opening, after the creative team had been forced to cancel a first preview performance when COVID-19 cases were discovered within the company. That meant less time for Jackson to finesse scenes and songs, causing a burst of small panic behind the scenes. Originally scheduled to start previews on April 6, the production launched instead on April 12, just in time for the show’s understudies to spring into action and for Jackson to make revisions. It opened just two weeks later, on April 26, becoming a bona fide critical smash, with Jackson being celebrated for the musical’s craftsmanship, fearlessness, and unbridled humanity. Sales have been strong, and last night’s Tony wins—for Jackson as the show’s book writer, and A Strange Loop as best musical—are sure to bolster the show’s fortunes.

That Wednesday before opening, Jackson was thinking back to the beginning of rehearsals.

“It was a really exciting and emotional day,” Jackson, 41, recalled from the Washington Heights apartment he’s lived in for 15 years. “I told the room that day that it was really amazing that this thing I wrote alone in a room up the stairs of this little old lady in a bungalow house in the middle of nowhere in Jamaica, Queens—that I wrote this monologue as a little life raft for myself on my little Compaq Presario laptop—somehow, over the years, blossomed into this mighty ship that landed on Broadway.”

The seeds for that ending were planted, he thinks, when he added the lyric to the opening number calling what we were about see a “Big, Black, and queer-ass American Broadway show.” He confessed, “Even when I wrote that, I didn’t think the show was going to Broadway, and that wasn’t even what I was trying to do. I was trying to make what felt like a Broadway show to me—my version of what that was supposed to be. So it’s just wild, all that manifesting and that sort of artistic rigor ended up resulting in the show going to Broadway. It feels like a miracle or magical, or something otherworldly, that that could happen.”

A Strange Loop follows Usher (played Jaquel Spivey in his first professional gig out of college), a 25-going-on-26-year-old “overweight-to-obese” Black queer musical theatre writer making a musical about a 25-going-on-26-year-old “overweight-to-obese” Black queer musical theatre writer, ad infinitum. The character’s name is both a reference to the blockbuster-selling R&B singer-songwriter and to the day job the character holds at The Lion King on Broadway, counting down intermissions while assisting entitled wealthy patrons to their seats and dreaming up his breakthrough show; we spend the majority of the show in his mind. Accompanying Usher is a Greek chorus of six “Thoughts,” played to perfection by the spectacular sextet of L Morgan Lee, James Jackson Jr., John-Michael Lyles, John-Andrew Morrison, Jason Veasey, and Antwayn Hopper, each of them contrasting, conspiring against, or calling him out at every turn.

The origins of Jackson’s crowning achievement have become somewhat mythic: Shortly after graduating from New York University’s Dramatic Writing Program in 2002, a 21-year-old Jackson wrote a thinly veiled monologue, a coping mechanism for his career anxiety as a fresh-out-of-college playwright called “Why I Can’t Get Work,” that became the kernel for the show. That monologue was about a young Black gay man walking around New York assessing his life, his career trajectory, and his worth as a Black gay man who is “too fat,” “too femme,” and “too Black” for the culture.

Two years later, while Jackson was attending NYU’s Graduate Musical Theatre Writing Program, a peer of his, Darius Marcel Smith, performed an original song about a one-night stand with another man, and the guilt and shame that came along with being a God-fearing Christian. Inspired, Jackson jotted a lyric in his notebook: “All those Black gay boys I knew who chose to go on back to the Lord.” This phrase, and a musical motif from Tori Amos’s “Pretty Good Year” (the third single from her sophomore effort Under the Pink) inspires him to pen “Memory Song,” snapshots from his coming of age in Detroit as a gay boy with a religious and homophobic upbringing; it would be the first song he’d write as composer and lyricist, and the first germ of what would one day be A Strange Loop. The monologue soon grew into a solo show titled Fast Food Town, performed to mixed reviews Off-Broadway at Ars Nova.

Originally titled “Gayville”—a riff on Exile in Guyville, Liz Phair’s seminal 1993 bedroom-pop indie-rock debut, itself a response to the 1972 Rolling Stones’ cock-rock album Exile on Main Street—Jackson’s musical followed an ultra-self-aware, disillusioned, and furious 20-something undergoing a quarter-life crisis and the downward spirals that come with wading through a liminal space of being a postgraduate, pre-career artist trying to find their corner of the sky. While Phair’s influence looms over the project (check out “Inner White Girl”), her inclusion was a bit more deliberate at first.

“There was an old, old, old draft of A Strange Loop wherein Usher, the character in the musical, was writing these mashups of his songs to Liz Phair songs, mostly to her Exile in Guyville album, and there was a narrative also within the piece where he was trying to reach out to her and get her permission to use her music in the show but also talking to her through his own music mashed up with hers,” Jackson explained. “In real life, I was trying to track her down and get the rights to use her music as well.”

Eventually Phair got back to Jackson, encouraging him to write his own material and make it personal. So he scrapped the mash-ups and began to purge, but thankfully he didn’t take himself too seriously. As a result, A Strange Loop is a disruption, an existential treatise on the soul as it wrestles with topics and taboos at the crossroads of the sacred and profane, all while eviscerating the musical theatre form. Yet its most alluring takeaways come from Jackson’s obsession with the self and with self-identity—an impulse that no doubt be traced to the singer-songwriters he adored growing up.

“There was a song I had written in the show that’s no longer in it called ‘Fan Boy’ that was a mashup against the Liz Phair song called ‘Strange Loop,’ and for years I never knew what the term ‘strange loop’ was—it was just a song on the album that I just really liked,” he clarified. One day it dawned on Jackson to type the phrase into Google, which led him to Douglas R. Hofstadter, the scholar of cognitive science and comparative literature. In his Pulitzer-winning 1979 book Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid, Hofstadter coined the term “a strange loop” to describe the navel-gazing nature of individualism and intelligence, writing: “In the end, we are self-perceiving, self-inventing, locked-in mirages that are little miracles of self-reference.” The term, used to describe the paradox of one’s sense of self, is also mirrored in Jackson’s allusions to what W. E. B. DuBois called the “double-consciousness” of African American selfhood created by racism and anti-Blackness. Thus began a series of strange loops, with Liz Phair leading Jackson to Hofstadter, which in turn led him to the title and structure of his groundbreaking hit.

A Strange Loop is hardly the first metafictional musical. There was Jonathan Larson’s semi-autobiographical rock monologue-turned-musical, tick, tick . . . BOOM!, adapted by Lin-Manuel Miranda into a feature film last year. There’s also Jeff Bowen and Hunter Bell’s [title of show], a one-act musical about four characters creating the musical they’re simultaneously performing, which played at the Lyceum Theatre 14 years prior. Yet Jackson’s acclaimed pop-rock Bildungsroman actually follows a lineage of sui generis metafictional musical theatre writers of the post-Black Arts Movement tradition. Like Kirsten Childs’s The Bubbly Black Girl Sheds Her Chameleon Skin and Stew’s Passing Strange before it, A Strange Loop is a funny, life-affirming coming-of-age story about a young, gifted, and Black creative as they journey toward self-discovery and self-acceptance. Fusing gospel, jazz, punk, and blues with rock music, Passing Strange is a fourth wall-breaking picaresque odyssey of Black identity and code-switching against a backdrop of Berlin’s 1987 May Day riots. Through a mélange of ‘60s girl group pop, R&B, and showtunes, The Bubbly Black Girl Sheds Her Chameleon Skin explores a young woman’s battle with internalized racism and self-worth while surrounded by racial profiling, de facto segregation, and sexism in the wake of 16th Street Baptist Church bombing.

A Strange Loop continues the conversations that began with those genre-defying musicals, merging gospel, folk rock, bedroom pop, and alternative music while forging a new path for Black and queer storytelling in the age of Truvada. In American theatre, white gay men have co-opted and oversaturated the marketplace for LGBTQ narratives. Whether it’s the gay Civil Rights movement (Mart Crowley’s The Boys In The Band, Dustin Lance Black’s 8), or the HIV/AIDS epidemic (Larry Kramer’s The Normal Heart, Tony Kushner’s Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes, Steven Dietz’s Lonely Planet, William Finn’s Falsettos), or collective trauma (Doug Wright’s I Am My Own Wife, Moisés Kaufman’s The Laramie Project, Martin Sherman’s Bent, Harvey Fierstein’s Torch Song Trilogy, and Douglas Carter Beane’s The Nance), or even queer joy (Fierstein’s La Cage aux Folles, Sherman’s The Boy From Oz). Naturally, a show centering a plus-sized, dark-skinned Black queer man with ambition stands in opposition by design. But A Strange Loop goes further than that, showing no qualms about interrogating such issues as the HIV stigmatization of the Black queer community, racial fetishization, internalized homophobia, parental blackmail, self-loathing, and the paradox, trauma, joy and vicissitudes of being Black and queer and religious.

Indeed, in its brisk 90 minutes, A Strangle Loop both deconstructs and glorifies Black art and queer iconography with absolute abandon. Bristling with references to The Golden Girls and Designing Women, advice columnist Dan Savage, and spoken word artist Audre Lorde, Stephen Sondheim and bell hooks, Scott Rudin and Betty Friedan, the show skews the lines between gay and straight, Black and white, high and low culture with aplomb, putting the musical-within-a-musical in a league of its own, while bridging divides very few of the aforementioned shows have.

No one is safe from critique. One of the biggest targets of Jackson’s ire is Tyler Perry, the multimillionaire movie media mogul, well known for his lowbrow, Chitlin’ Circuit-inspired entertainment, full of ham-fisted messages about the power of prayer. Hallmarks of Perry’s works are satirized and spoofed with surgical precision in A Strange Loop: The stalwart matriarch, the low-income black sheep with an addiction to crack cocaine, the “Strong Black Woman” meandering through life as a lonely spinster with an offstage Ken doll lover interest. Jackson’s contentious relationship with Perry began when a childhood friend introduced him to the impresario’s work shortly after he arrived in New York in 1999; as a gag gift for her birthday, he purchased tickets to see a staged production of Why Did I Get Married? at the Beacon Theatre, starring R&B vocalist Kelly Price, who wore a fat suit in the first act. In A Strange Loop, Usher calls Perry out for his “simple-minded hack buffoonery,” but the mockery is tinged with anxiety; we get the sense that Usher might genuinely be afraid he will create such color-by-number material himself. With each gibe, Jackson holds up a mirror to both the protagonist and himself with profound hilarity and heartbreak.

In one of the show’s most subversive, farcical numbers, “Tyler Perry Writes Real Life,” Usher is confronted by his Thoughts as they masquerade as historical Black figures: Zora Neale Hurston, James Baldwin, Marcus Garvey, Harriet Tubman, and a proxy for every Oscar-bait antebellum picture simply given the name Twelve Years a Slave. Throughout the tune, the Thoughts chastise him for imagining that he is above Perry’s work, especially when an agent offers him an opportunity to quickly ghostwrite a gospel play—news that overjoys his devout parents but repulses Usher. While Usher’s critiques about Perry’s oeuvre have been echoed by his peers, it is his pointed criticism of the filmmaker’s stigmatization of Black queer sexuality and HIV that come into sharpest focus, especially where Perry’s “hate the sin, not the sinner” ethos is concerned. Toward the end of the show, Usher leads his Thoughts in a revival number titled “AIDS Is God’s Punishment,” ridiculing Perry’s proclivity to perpetuate stigma and condone the belief that people living with HIV are sinners who deserve punishment for loving and living out loud. It is a primal scream, Usher’s direct confrontation with the fear mongering and homophobic scripture preached down to him as a youth, as well as a moment of grief for a friend he lost to AIDS. Jackson doesn’t just critique Perry and the Black church here; he also zeroes in on the American theatre and its role in disregarding Black queer people and their stories in favor of white comfort.

“Being willing to challenge any assumptions or popular points of view, being able to question any orthodoxy or status quo—to me that goes in all directions,” Jackson said. “That means if Black Twitter is into something and I’m not into it, that means being willing to risk the ire of Black Twitter, that means being willing to risk the ire of the theatre world, that means being willing to risk the ire of liberal Democrats, of conservatives, of whomever—white people, Black people, everyone, treating everybody the same—and being willing to stand alone, if necessary, in your truth.”

A lot has changed for this musical theatre provocateur in recent years. A major career shift came when A Strange Loop was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 2020, becoming only the 10th musical to earn the honor overall and the first to win the award without a Broadway run. Jackson, who was watching an episode of Bravo’s The Real Housewives of Atlanta while conversing with playwright Branden Jacobs-Jenkins when he received the news, not only made history as the first Black artist to win for writing a musical; he has also become part of a string of Black-authored Pulitzer winner, with Jackie Sibblies Drury’s divisive critical race experiment Fairview nabbing the award in 2019, and Katori Hall’s The Hot Wing King taking the award in 2021 and James Ijames’s Fat Ham winning it this year.

That win was part of the momentum building behind A Strange Loop, which had its Off-Broadway premiere at Playwrights Horizons in 2019, then a limited engagement at Washington, D.C.’s Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company last year. Joining a team led by producer Barbara Whitman and Page 73 Productions, the show’s current Broadway outing has attached an impressive Rolodex of stars to its co-producers’ roster, including RuPaul Charles, Don Cheadle, Jennifer Hudson, Mindy Kaling, Billy Porter, Ilana Glazer, Alan Cumming, Zach Stafford, Cody Renard Richard, Benj Pasek, and Justin Paul. It garnered a record 11 Tony nominations, and though it only took home two of those, they were ones that count: Best Book of Musical and Best Musical. (Best Original Score went to Six.) These wins cap a busy awards season that saw it take home Outstanding Production of a Musical at the 2022 Drama League Awards, and an Outstanding Actor in Musical Award for lead actor Jacques Spivey, who also got an Outer Critics Circle Award and a Theatre World Award honor. Meanwhile L Morgan Lee’s performance earned her the distinction of being the first openly transgender performer to originate a role in a Pulitzer-winning piece of theatre and the first to receive a Tony nomination. Jackson was also included in Time Magazine’s Time 100, an annual listicle of the most influential people in the world, where he was nominated by Porter.

Like many writers for the theatre, he has also become an in-demand writer for TV and film. He recently joined the creative team of the Amazon original series I’m a Virgo, a half-hour superhero satire from writer-director-producer Boots Riley (Sorry to Bother You), starring Jharrel Jerome. Jackson is also developing a TV series for ABC Signature and sold an original pitch to write an untitled horror feature for A24, which Ari Aster and Lars Knudsen are producing under their Square Peg banner. But not to worry, theatre fans, Jackson is still at work on various stage works: White Girl in Danger is a new pop-rock musical partly inspired by classic daytime soaps and ’90s-era Lifetime movies, in development with the Vineyard Theatre Off-Broadway and director Lileana Blain-Cruz; and Teeth, based on the 2007 indie vagina dentata horror comedy by Mitchell Lichtenstein, is being workshopped in collaboration with composer-lyricist Anna K. Jacobs. Jackson has also been commissioned by LCT3, Lincoln Center Theater’s program for emerging artists, to pen Accounts Payable, an original musical inspired by the days when he was slumming it as a finance clerk and executive assistant.

From those bleak early to his current success, Jackson’s North Star has been his dedication to his craft and to the truth.

“I do feel like I’ve changed in a lot of ways,” Jackson said of the past few years in the spotlight. “But I also feel like I am the same person I’ve always been, which is to say I’ve always been somebody who has been trying to get at the truth of life as I understand it and constantly try to scavenge and dig deeper and get past the surface level answers of questions I might be having or that confuse me. I feel like as a young person, a young writer, I was doing that from a much younger perspective.

“That has been the trail I tried to blaze: to be willing to have an unpopular opinion and have a nuanced opinion,” he continued. “That’s only gotten more important to me, especially over these last couple of years, as lots of cultural conversations have taken hold and really gotten louder. I have lot of criticisms and questions in places where I stand apart from my peers, and I have to be willing to stand in that place. I try to stand in that place respectfully and with compassion, even when I want to read people for fucking filth. Even when I have utter contempt for some people and ideas that I see being bandied around.”

As uncompromising as his show’s protagonist, Jackson stood in his truth, and, upon receiving his Tony Award for Best Book of a Musical to a standing ovation, encouraged the American theatre to opt for quality in art. This is a fulcrum moment not just for Jackson, but for every outcast and outlier building their life rafts on the island of misfit toys that is the theatre at its best. As a patron sings to Usher in “A Sympathetic Ear”: “If you’re not scared to write the truth, then it’s probably not worth writing / And if you’re not scared of living the truth, then it’s probably not worth living.”

Marcus Scott is a New York-based playwright, musical writer and journalist. He’s written for Architectural Digest, Time Out New York, The Brooklyn Rail, Elle, Essence, Out and Playbill, among other publications.

#Michael R Jackson #A Strange Loop #MichaelRJackson #AStrangeLoop #Marcus Scott #MarcusScott #WriteMarcus #Write Marcus #American Theatre Magazine #Black playwrights #Black Musical Theatre Writers #Black Musical Theater Writers

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