Reggae great dies

Joseph Hill

January 22, 1949 - August 19, 2006

Reggae artist who sang for Jamaican peace

JOSEPH HILL was one of the most talented of the Jamaican roots reggae singers who rode to international success in the late 1970s on the coat-tails — or perhaps one should say the dreadlocks — of Bob Marley.

Fronting the vocal trio Culture, his breakthrough came in 1977 with the apocalyptic Two Sevens Clash, which became hugely popular with white punk-rockers in the late 1970s. Back home in Jamaica, his 1978 hit Stop Fussing and Fighting became an anthem of protest against the political violence sweeping Jamaica at the time.

Apart from a brief break in the 1980s, he continued to tour and record with Culture for the rest of his life and if the sound grew more polished, his attitude remained unchanged. His most recent album, World Peace in 2003, restated the message of Stop Fussing and Fighting on a global level.

Born in 1949 in Linstead in the parish of St Catherine in Jamaica, he began his musical career in his teens as a “selector†(disc jockey) with a local sound system. By 1971 he had formed the Soul Defenders and moved to Kingston, where he was employed as a percussionist and backing singer at Studio One, run by Clement “Coxsone†Dodd. Although he played on a number of local Jamaican hits, his own early solo recordings such as Behold the Land and Take Me Girl made little impact.

Disappointed, the Soul Defenders returned to St Catherine and worked the tourist hotels on the north Jamaica coast.

However, the prospects for all Jamaican musicians changed dramatically when Bob Marley and the Wailers made their international breakthrough in 1975.

Hill and his cousins, Albert Walker and Roy “Kenneth†Dayes, returned to Kingston to try again. Initially known as the African Disciples, the name was soon changed to Culture. With Hill taking the lead and his cousins backing him, his vocal style was more influenced by Winston Rodney (who recorded as Burning Spear) than Marley, and he began incorporating righteous Rastafarian messages of spiritual prophecy and apocalyptical warning, as well as sociopolitical themes of racial prejudice and injustice, into his songwriting.

Teaming up with producer Joe Gibbs and his engineer, Errol Thompson, known as “the Mighty Twoâ€, Culture debuted with the single This Time on Gibbs’s Belmont label and followed with See Them a Come and Two Sevens Clash.

The latter was a dramatic, ominous song based on a Rastafarian interpretation of the Bible that said when the two sevens clashed — the year was 1977 — the world would end. The song was a huge hit in Jamaica, where it is said that on July 7, 1977 — when four sevens clashed — record levels of absenteeism were recorded in schools and workplaces. In Britain, where the single and an album of the same name were available only on import, Culture acquired a cult following on London’s burgeoning punk scene which brought the trio to the attention of Richard Branson. Anxious to find reggae acts for his Virgin label to replicate the success Chris Blackwell had enjoyed on Island with Marley, in 1978 he led a scouting party that included Johnny Rotten to Jamaica with Culture near the top of the list of those he hoped to sign.

By this time, Hill and his group had left Gibbs and after a brief, abortive spell on Duke Reid’s Treasure Isle imprint had moved to Sonia Pottinger’s High Note label. Offering a generous contract for their international rights, Branson returned with a batch of signings that included not only Culture but also Prince Far-I, the Gladiators, the Mighty Diamonds, the Twinkle Brothers, Johnnie Clarke and Big Youth.

These artists helped to launch Virgin’s Front Line label, the striking logo of which featured a clenched black fist and strands of barbed wire. Culture’s debut for the label, Harder than the Rest in 1978, became one of Front Line’s best-selling albums and included the single Stop the Fussing and Fighting, which Culture performed memorably at the symbolic One Love Peace Concert in Jamaica in 1978, held to broker a peace between the rival, gun-toting gangs supporting the island’s two leading political parties, led by Michael Manley and Edward Seaga.

Hill and his backing singers also toured Britain backed by the Revolutionaries, which included the rhythm of Sly Dunbar and Robbie Shakespeare, and issued two further albums on Front Line in 1979 with Cumbalo and International Herb.

As trends in reggae changed and the music mutated into the digital style known as dancehall, pop audiences in Europe and America lost interest and Culture broke up in 1982. However, four years later they were back.

Between 1986 and 1992 they recorded six further albums in Hill’s classic Rastafarian roots style, although they also incorporated elements of dancehall into their sound. Dayes left in 1993 and was replaced first by Ire’Lano Malomo and then Telford Nelson, who made his debut on the album Payday in 2000.

It was followed by Hill’s solo album, Humble African, in 2001. A further Culture album, World Peace, followed in 2003. He made his last performance with the group in Jamaica at the Reggae Sunsplash festival last month

He died when he collapsed after a show in Germany. His family said that he had been suffering from liver failure.

Joseph Hill, singer, was born on January 22, 1949. He died on August 19, 2006, aged 57.