On the night of 23 February 1985, a soundclash to end them all was in full swing on a big lawn off Waltham Park Road in Kingston, Jamaica. Black Scorpio sound system’s Jah Screw kicked off the event with an onslaught of fresh dubplates from the likes of Frankie Paul, Johnny Osbourne and Earl Sixteen. A heaving crowd begged for more as the mic passed down a lineup of deejays, from General Trees to Sassafrass to Culture Lee, all hyping the dancers into a frenzy. Across the park, Lloyd “King Jammy” James looked beyond the sea of bouncing heads, to his opponents, Black Scorpio who were slaying the session before him. He should have been worried, but Jammy had a trick up his sleeve, and handed a freshly cut dubplate to his selector, Tupps, who placed the thick black slate on his turntable and dropped the needle.
A succession of high-pitched snares sliced through the tweeters, and the whole crowd turned to Jammy’s speaker boxes as a strange new rhythm hit them in the ribs. The beat was rigid and tinny, but with a gargantuan bassline, almost punk in its attack; two notes pounding relentlessly with a brief gasp of air at the end of each bar, making a mass of bodies gyrate and wine. Then, a vocal dropped; an almost tortured tenor crying, “Way in my brain, it’s way in my braaaaaaiiiiiiiiiin”. The track was pulled up again and again. More dubplates of this wild electronic rhythm rocked the crowd until there was nothing left for Black Scorpio to respond with. They shut down the sound, and King Jammy retained his crown.
The strange new rhythm was the all encompassing Sleng Teng which made its debut that night, altering the landscape of reggae and, in turn, dance music in general. A date carved into the monolithic tree trunk of music history. It’s a moment so many of us wish we could go back and witness first hand.
The only problem is, it didn’t happen.
That’s not to say there wasn’t a clash on this date, or even that Jammy didn’t win with a stack of Sleng Teng dubplates in his arsenal, but the widely shared story of Wayne Smith’s ‘Under Mi Sleng Teng’ debuting that night is a myth, passed down through hearsay, and perpetuated by spurious Wiki entries and half-arsed Googling.
Before we get to the bottom of what actually happened that night, let me take you back in time, beyond the lawns of Jamaica’s capital in the 1980s, and over to Tokyo where in 1946 we find engineer Tadao Kashio poised to launch his first major invention, the yubiwa pipe; a ring mounted device designed so smokers in a frugal post-war Japan could puff their cigarettes down to the nub without burning their fingers. It was a sweeping success, and Casio was born.
Over the next few decades, Kashio and his team focussed on calculators and digital watches, until 1980 when they branched into music equipment with their first keyboard, the Casiotone CT-201; another success for the company. They soon hired classical pianist Okuda Hiroko who was fresh from college, and set her the task of creating preset rhythms for the next phase in the Casiotone family, including the MT-40 which hit the shops the following year. Drum machines with preset beats had been a built-in feature on home organs since the late 60s, but the MT-40 offered the musician something new, in the form of a miniature sub-keyboard either for playing bass notes, or allowing the main keyboard to be played along with Hiroko’s pre-programmed basslines.
The MT-40 was considered a toy by many, but it found favour with a few artists in the west including Julian Cope who bought one in 1981, using it that year on a demo of ‘World Shut Your Mouth’ which would score him his biggest ever hit single when he released it five years later with a full backing band in tow. Cope didn’t forget his trusty little Casio, however, and the MT-40 later cropped up on a Peel Session, and the World Shut Your Mouth album in 1984.
That same year, Noel Davey, an aspiring Jamaican keyboardist from the same Waterhouse neighbourhood as King Jammy, asked his mentor George “Buddy” Haye to pick him up a synth while Haye’s band, The Wailing Souls were on tour in America. Davey’s only keyboard was a melodica – a handheld pipe organ favoured by dub legend Augustus Pablo – and he hoped Haye would return with a state-of-the-art Yamaha DX7, an FM synthesizer which dominated pop in 1984, most prominently on ‘Take On Me’ by A-ha. A DX7 would have cost Haye nearly $2000 at the time, so instead he picked up an MT-40, a drop in the ocean at $150, and sent it back to Jamaica.
Frustrated with the limitations of his melodica, everything changed for Davey as he dabbled with his new Casio. “Other tings started to happen”, Davey explained in a 2016 interview with DJ 745, “and right away I started to make different sounds.” But most importantly he adds “(you) just press it and it plays.” In fact it was vocalist Wayne Smith who, by chance, pressed something on Davey’s MT-40, triggering a rhythm which caught them both off guard.
Smith was just 16 when he cut his first single with Jammy, a rootical reimagining of Barbara Streisand’s ‘Woman In Love’ which they reshaped into the sublime ‘Life Is A Moment In Space’, but despite two albums and a stack of singles to his name, he was still considered a kid amongst a town full of microphone heavyweights, and he needed something new to make his mark. In November 1984, on the cusp of his 19th birthday, Smith was now freestyling fresh lyrics over the wild rhythm they’d unwittingly unleashed from Davey’s Casio via the “rock” preset which Hiroko had programmed back in 1980.
Hiroko remains enigmatic over her inspiration for the MT-40’s “rock” rhythm. For years it was rumoured that she based it on Eddie Cochran’s 1959 single ‘Somethin’ Else’, but Hiroko eventually denied this, claiming she didn’t even know the song, and instead only hinting that she borrowed the riff from a British rock record from the 1970s. “You would immediately notice it once you hear the song” she told Endgadget in 2015. Chat forums and Facebook groups were awash with wild guesses, the most convincing contenders included the intro of ‘Hang On To Yourself’ by David Bowie, or the main riff from ‘Anarchy In The UK’ by The Sex Pistols. Less likely, perhaps, yet suspiciously similar was ‘Isolation’ from Joy Division’s Closer LP, released around the time Hiroko got the job at Casio.
More recently Hiroko has reneged on her previous clue. “I did use to listen to a lot of British rock, so I’m sure there must have been songs which influenced me,” she admitted to Nippon in 2022, “but really, the bassline was something I came up with myself. It wasn’t based on any other tune.” Why Hiroko changed her story remains unclear, but she hasn’t denied the possibility of a peripheral influence, so let’s take a closer look at those British rock contenders.
Joy Division’s ‘Isolation’ is probably off the cards due to its release in 1980, but there’s a remarkable similarity to the MT-40 bassline which bubbles throughout, and let’s not forget how much the band owed to Bowie, particularly his Berlin trilogy.
Before we get to Bowie, there’s always ‘Anarchy In The UK’ which of course Hiroko has denied, but it’s again worth mentioning due to Eddie Cochran’s influence. It’s pretty clear that Cochran inspired The Pistols, particularly Steve Jones’ guitar playing, and if it’s not abundantly obvious on ‘Anarchy In The UK’ then there’s always their covers of ‘Something Else’ and ‘C’mon Everybody’ in The Great Rock & Roll Swindle. But Hiroko wasn’t aware of Eddie Cochran in 1980, so let’s skip back to ‘Hang Onto Yourself’.
If Hiroko hadn’t later denied that “you would immediately notice” where she got her riff from, then ‘Hang Onto Yourself’ is surely the one you’d immediately notice, but whether it was a conscious decision or merely subliminal, it’s worth noting that this wasn’t the first time this song appeared on record. Bowie devotees will know that the Spiders From Mars version was a rework of a single by his short lived side project Arnold Corns. It’s very similar, but bears a striking resemblance to – drumroll please – ‘C’mon Everybody’ by Eddie Cochran. It seems strange now that someone should single out ‘Somethin’ Else’ as Sleng Teng’s origin when Cochran had played a similar riff on his more famous single, but there it is plain as day as the motivation for Bowie’s bassline.
Of course Cochran’s iconic riff can be traced back through the guitar theatrics of Chuck Berry, back to the hard-pickin’ blues of T-Bone Walker. Those early rock & roll records, mixed with imported swing and jump-blues singles, dominated dances in Jamaica throughout the 1950s. Sound men such as Duke Reid and Coxsone Dodd championed records like ‘Later For The Gator’ which would pave the way for the island’s musicians to record their own approximations of R&B that would soon evolve into ska, then later rocksteady, and finally reggae. There’s a direct lineage from Laurel Aitken’s ‘Calypso Rock & Roll’ in 1957 to Cornell Campbell’s ‘Dance Inna Greenwich Farm’ in 1975, which the Studio 1 singer based on Bobby Day’s R&R hit ‘Over And Over’. Closing the circle is an instrumental version of the Greenwich Farm rhythm featuring bamboo-saxophonist Sugar Belly who performed on many mento and calypso singles at the birth of Jamaica’s recording industry.
Subconsciously, the “rock” rhythm had already been ingrained in Jamaica’s dance halls for decades when Smith and Davey stumbled on that Casio preset, so it stands to reason that something might click when they first heard it, a spark that inspired Smith to pen a song which gave the rhythm its name ‘Under Mi Sleng Teng’.
The endless debate over Sleng Teng’s origins often overshadows the song itself, perhaps because a reggae song about smoking weed is positively evergreen, but while Smith’s lyrics are pro-ganja, it’s also a cautionary tale, warning the listener off the harder substances which were wreaking havoc in the poverty stricken neighbourhoods of Kingston and beyond. By the mid 80s, the Shower Posse had grown from a brutal street gang distributing hard drugs across Kingston, to a CIA funded operation with members in Miami, and up the east coast to New York City. Cocaine and crack was rife in Jammy’s Waterhouse neighbourhood, and Smith used his platform, warning listeners to stick to smoking weed, known locally as “sling ting”; a far less antisocial pastime as Smith declares “mi smoke it and mi pass it through di window, and mi give it to mi nextdoor neighbour”.
Smith was inspired by the recent hit ‘Under Mi Sensi’ which lit up dances in 1984 with Barrington Levy describing an arrest for possession of ganja. Ironically, this was produced by Black Scorpio selector Jah Screw who revamped a rhythm known as African Beat, after Johnny Osbourne had a dancehall hit with it on his ‘Bring The Sensi Come’ single earlier in 84. The rhythm itself dates back to 1968 when Coxsone produced a rocksteady remake of a jaunty swing number by German big-band-leader Bert Kaempfert. His kwela-inspired ‘Afrikaan Beat’ and its accompanying album A Swingin’ Safari were both international hits, winding up in record collections (and later charity shops) across Europe, the U.S. and presumably Jamaica as well.
Such was the reach of this easy listening-infused rhythm, Levy wound up performing ‘Under Mi Sensi’ live on the ‘Wheeler Dealer’ episode of British kids TV show No. 73, with Sandi Toksvig, Andrea Arnold and Nicholas Parsons bopping and skanking in the background. It aired around 11am on 23 February 1985, confusing parents who nervously eyed the off button on their remotes as their children watched with glee. Later that evening, a big reggae showdown was due to take place. Nope, not on Waltham Park Road, but in Montego Bay between Barry G and the UK’s own David Rodigan which was broadcast simultaneously on the Jamaican Broadcasting Company and Capital Radio in London.
Andy Chislehurst was glued to his radio that night, and as the clash commenced, he grabbed a cassette to capture the action. “Only two songs gone,” Barry G declared, as he taunted his opponent over a wonky dub mix of the Sleng Teng. When Chislehurst shared the tape online back in 2017 with a photo of his handwritten cover, I double took. “Is that the correct date?” I quizzed the intrepid archivist. “Pretty sure I wrote the date on the inlay when I recorded it,” he replied, “so it should be right.” It was. In fact, Rodigan included a flyer for the clash in his memoir My Life In Reggae. Some have even referred to this as “the Sleng Teng clash” due to the number of versions of the rhythm which were aired.
Something didn’t add up. If its first public outing was at the Jammy vs Black Scorpio clash that same night, then how did Barry G and Rodigan have so many Sleng Tengs already? “I have eight answer versions lined up”, Rodigan cautioned his competitor. Of course there’s no reason why Rodigan wouldn’t have up front versions, but amongst them he played Chris Laine’s Fashion version, made in the basement of Dub Vendor in South London as a response to Sleng Teng’s dancehall domination. Chislehurst also kindly sent me a link to Dub Vendor’s charts from 16 February that year, and ‘Under Mi Sleng Teng’ was at number 5; the UK release on Greensleeves, no less.
Jammy had strong ties with the UK. Much of his studio gear was sourced there, and he was in London making deals for future releases when Davey and Smith first found the Casio’s rock preset. They’d taken the keyboard down to Jammy’s studio, only to discover he was overseas. “My wife called me and said, ‘Boy, they have a bad riddim here’,” Jammy recalled in an interview for Boomshots TV, “so I flew in a couple of days later.” With the Casio in the control room, the producer’s major input was to dip the tempo. The duo had been practising the song at breakneck speed, so Jammy dialed it back to an acceptable reggae pace, and sent Smith into the vocal booth.
Having captured ‘Under Mi Sleng Teng’ on tape, Jammy played it to some of his entourage who weren’t convinced; in fact some were openly derisory of the result. In Beth Lesser’s Dancehall book for Soul Jazz, Smith is on record saying he had to step out of the studio so they wouldn’t see him crying at their reaction: “So after me done bawl now, wet up mi face so they no seh me a bawl, go back inside and me say ‘you don’t pay me no money yet, so you nah go lose. Just put it out!’ and (Jammy) say ‘alright, gonna play it inna the dance.’”
And here lies the source of confusion over the date. Lesser mentions Jammy cutting it “directly on dubplate to play at the clash”, and describes a dejected Smith who’d gone home instead of going to the dance to hear its debut. He was woken early the next morning to be told, “Wayne, a the wickedest thing inna the dance. It play all night. Nobody nah want hear nothing else!” So Smith wasn’t present when Sleng Teng debuted, and its possible neither was Jammy who told Boomshots TV: “I sent it out on the soundsystem”, not a clash, but a local dance in Waterhouse hosted by Jammy’s Super Power with his right hand man Tupps at the controls.
Lesser’s Dancehall: The Rise Of Jamaican Dancehall Culture (2008) was, in fact, a collection of her photos and articles which appeared in the magazine Reggae Quarterly which she published from her home in Toronto in the 80s. An indispensable insight into the early days of the dancehall scene from someone who was there, taking regular trips to Jamaica, and spending much of her time hanging at Jammy’s yard. Her 1989 book King Jammy’s is almost a diary of events which led up to the Black Scorpio clash, including Tenor Saw recording his ‘Pumpkin Belly’ as a Sleng Teng dubplate on 16 February, so it’s probably safe to assume that the Waltham Park Road clash happened on the 23rd.
Confusingly, Jammy told Boomshot TV there was “a clash the following week with Black Scorpio”, but there couldn’t have been only a week between recording it and that clash because, as we now know, the song was already charting in the UK the week before. Various accounts from Jammy, Smith and Davey put the recording session in December 84, though the exact date is unclear, but after it corked the dance on its first outing, ‘Under Mi Sleng Teng’ was mixed, pressed and on the streets soon after.
In its wake, a slew of versions were voiced at Jammy’s. Veterans including Nicodemus, Sugar Minott and Johnny Osbourne all cut versions, Osbourne’s ‘Budy Bye’ remaining one of the most iconic of the original Sleng Teng sessions, second only to Smith’s original, of course. Jammy’s former mentor King Tubby released the ludicrously squelchy ‘Under Mi Fat Ting’ by Anthony Red Rose, produced by Steely & Clevie with the assistance of Davey and his MT-40. Meanwhile, as heard on the Rodigan vs Barry G clash, Fashion Records recorded a UK take on the rhythm using a LinnDrum, with fast-chatters Andrew Paul and Smiley Culture voicing killer versions.
Within months there were hundreds of Sleng Tengs doing the rounds internationally, and out of sheer exhaustion the rhythm inevitably had its detractors. “Oh no, not that Sleng Teng riddim again!” exclaimed Tippa Irie on his ‘Sleng Teng Finish Already’ which dropped late in 85 using a variation of the Tempo rhythm; Tubby’s digital successor to the now omnipresent Casio preset. Jammy replied with the Agony rhythm, and in no time most major producers had ditched traditional musicians in favour of drum machines and synths. Forward thinking rhythm sections with the foresight to go electronic, like Sly & Robbie, Steely & Clevie, and Mafia & Fluxy cleaned up, pumping out rhythm after rhythm, making stars of a whole new generation of dancehall MCs.
Meanwhile, Sleng Teng’s influence spread way beyond the dancehalls. Hip hop acts began incorporating it in their sets in the U.S. with Soul Dimension cutting a version of a Super Cat cut to make ‘Trash An’ Ready’ for B-Boy Records in 1987, and Shinehead included a boom-bap revamp of his own ‘Know How Fe Chat’ on his Unity album in 88.
In the UK, Renegade Soundwave reworked the rhythm for their ‘Cocaine Sex’ single with the incredible ‘Sub Aqua Overdrive Dub’ on the flip, while Stephen ‘Tin Tin’ Duffy joined forces with former Pigbag member Roger Freeman to form Dr. Calculus who recorded ‘Perfume From Spain’ a song that eventually, when recorded as ‘Full Of Love’ brought the Sleng Teng to Hollywood when it featured in John Hughes’ She’s Having A Baby in 1988, proving that even Wayne Smith is just a couple of degrees from Kevin Bacon.
Arguably Sleng Teng’s most groundbreaking moment since its release was in 1992 when SL2 borrowed the bassline for their hardcore meets ragga mashup ‘Way In My Brain’, reaching the top 30 just as hardcore was morphing into jungle, a movement which owes more than a passing nod to the digital revolution spurred on by Noel Davey’s keyboard and Hiroko’s preset. That relentless bass riff with its roots in jump-blues and rock & roll would pave the way for D&B, UK garage, dubstep and grime. There’s a whole movement of modern reggae artists enthralled by the computerised Sleng Teng style such as Disrupt, Manudigital, (and myself now and then), and it continues to inform everyone from Geoff Barrow to 100 Gecs, but it never sounded fresher than it did in February 1985 December 1984.
