Perusing the archives of Bob Andy’s repertoire, contained in a 2005 interview I did with him, I stumbled on some extremely appealing offers by the songwriting genius that are truly worth sharing. Andy, who passed away on March 27, is deemed Jamaica’s most prolific songwriter in well known tunes, but he was also a genius at expressing himself on matters that have been of deep problem to him, musically and in any other case.
As a youthful boy, he ran away from residence and finished up in another residence. It was at that ‘other home’ that his initial inspiration for tunes introduced by itself. He blamed it on Destiny:
“You hardly ever know what you are fated to become at times till you become it. Because when I wandered away from my mother’s residence and discovered myself in another residence and an outdated piano was sitting in a corner, I was entirely oblivious to what form of marriage that a person could build with that overseas-seeking instrument that I only saw on phase or from a pulpit in a church. And when it started off making feeling to me, after playing all over for a when, and my feeling of audio was establishing, it just opened another dimension of existence to I. And that is the inspiration –to ignorantly approach a thing and it reveals by itself to you.”
Working WITH COXSONE
He was extremely analytical in his perception of Clement Coxsone Dodd, the Studio one manager, with whom he recorded a quantity of songs:
“Coxsone was a form of a genius. He knew how to get the finest out of an artiste. He had a wink that was extremely assuring and comforting, so when the other facet of him did not match up to that facet, it turned extremely disappointing. But then you improve to master that disappointment only springs out of anticipations.”
In his humility, Bob usually downplayed the praises showered on him for his songwriting talent. When I pressed him in the interview to consider in any other case, he relented: “I have to actually start out accepting the credit history these people today are supplying me because a lot of occasions, I am so modest I say, ‘if I was a very good carpenter, I would make very good tables and chairs’, but I actually set out to craft these songs because they have been going to symbolize me for existence.”
He had words and phrases of inspiration for the visionless:
“Within you there are universes and multi-verses. There is so substantially occurring. If you can just take your eyes and ears out of the Tv set for a when and out of the bum-hum tunes for a when and go inside of yourself and check out out the ability you have as an person, then anything you want to get by means of in the entire world, it is inside of you.”
Talking about the inspiration at the rear of I have Got To Go Again Home, maybe the initial contact for repatriation in Jamaican well known tunes, Bob claimed:
“I had just started off to delve into Rastology, and I felt a nationwide body weight on me because we have been just coming to what we believed was Independence. And from that early time, as delicate as I was, is, and am, when that body weight arrived down on me, it was a eyesight I saw of people today just trodding residence.”
Melancholy was a issue he utilised to terrific benefit:
“What people today contact melancholy, when I go down there, I occur up with a music.”
Amongst lots of other sayings by the esteemed songwriter, he was extremely skeptical about awards from high officers:
“Nuff occasions when you just take them items, is just to make them guys de search very good. I kinda like to say I get my honour from the people today. The people today recognise me from me start out, and them accept me from then till now that me is sixty several years outdated.”
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