“Creating the sound and vision of Soul II Soul was all about authenticity, identity and giving the music industry something that they had never experienced before at the end of the day,” Jazzie says. The shirts were instant sell-outs and were quickly bootlegged, such was the demand from style-savvy club kids to buy into Soul II Soul’s urban cool. In order to create revenue, he enlisted artist Derek Yates, who had designed flyers for the sound system, to create the Funki Dred logo and reproduce it on T-shirts.Īn amalgamation of Jazzie’s trademark haircut of shaved head at the back and sides and dreadlocks on top (a style he cultivated so he could wear a hat to hide his deadlocks from his parents who disapproved of Rastafarian culture) and elements of the diverse crowds Soul II Soul’s sets were beginning to attract, it was designed as a symbol of inclusivity. “We came up with the name not just because of the music we played, it also stood for Daddae and myself – two souls moving together,” Jazzie says.Īs the sound system began making a name for itself, Jazzie decided to quit his job so that he could devote all his time and energy into realising his vision of taking Soul II Soul to the next level. Although they had been raised on the likes of James Brown, Isaac Hayes and Curtis Mayfield, Jazzie had fallen in love with the Lover’s Rock label (especially a group called Brown Sugar which included future collaborator Caron Wheeler) and the emerging Britfunk movement, and reinvented his sound system accordingly in 1982. People would see us with our boxes of records and wonder what we were doing!”Īfter a couple of years as Jah Rico, Jazzie and Daddae changed their name and their musical repertoire to reflect their shift in musical tastes. “We’d get to the bus stop in Hornsey with our equipment in a trolley, then get the bus to the gig, which could sometimes take up to two hours.
“The No.14 bus was basically our transit van,” Jazzie recalled in a recent BBC documentary. With every penny earned ploughed back into the system and spent on records, Jah Rico were forced to be resourceful, travelling to gigs on buses with their equipment or transporting it via shopping trolleys. Along with his close friend Daddae Harvey, Jazzie formed his own sound system called Jah Rico and began booking gigs across London.
THE WEATHERING MAGAZINE GREATEST HITS VOL.1 PORTABLE
Originally a Jamaican phenomenon, portable sound systems consisted of a pair of decks, a mic and huge speakers that would blast out bass-heavy beats, predominantly dub and reggae. His DJ set at a street party that year was to be the impetus of a journey that would take in sound systems, warehouse parties and a genre-defining Sunday night residency at London’s famed Africa Centre, before he established himself as one of the most dynamic figures in mainstream music and culture.įar more valuable to Jazzie (real name Trevor Beresford Romeo) than the £12 fee he pocketed for his Silver Jubilee manning of the decks, was the realisation that his unerring passion for music and DJing could become a career and he embarked on a relentless quest to establish himself as part of the sound system scene. H istory may have taught us that 1977 was the year of punk and that Johnny Rotten sneering his way through the Sex Pistols’ God Save The Queen was one of the defining musical and cultural statements of the year, but Her Majesty’s Silver Jubilee celebrations can also claim to herald the beginning of the career of Jazzie B.
Emerging from the underground sound system scene, Jazzie B and his collective of Funki Dreds gathered to make an album which incorporated a fusion of styles and influences to create a stylish sonic snapshot of multicultural London in the late 80s…
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