Courtney Melody – Ninga Mi Ninga Showcase

1988, Firehouse & World Enterprise Records

When you listens to Horace Andy, regardless of the record, you will inevitably think to yourself “damn, his vibrato is crazy”. Every time he has a long note at the end of a phrase (which is often, because he knows his strengths), it really starts vibrating in that way that you would expect from a technique called ‘vibrato’. It starts out fast, but soon gets faster and faster to the point that it almost becomes a perceivable tone of its own. Whether or not we are talking about the confines of reggae music, it is one of the most identifiable vocal styles out there, and nobody is in any danger of forgetting who Horace Andy is or what he sounds like.

Courtney Melody, on the other hand, doesn’t do it at all, and when he has a long note at the end of a phrase (no less often), it just holds steadfast and unwavering. No adjustment to timbre or volume. If you were to take this to your teacher as a vocal student I imagine they would dismiss it as ‘mechanistic’ just like how my music teachers used to give me a hard time for playing guitar with my thumb. But sir, Wes Montgomery does that and it sounds great!!

Anyway Courtney Melody is to vibrato like Wes Montgomery is to thumbs and octaves. It sounds brilliant. Piercing, stretched out, and grating are some words you might use to describe the sound when he holds a very wide-mouthed and tight-lipped “eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee”. And he puts it to good use as well; the minor scale is Courtney Melody’s playground. He goes all up and down and over everywhere. Sometimes in quintuplets, even (Mental Slavery). There is really no songwriting at play here, no structure to speak of. Each tune has its set of lyrics, a hook, and scatting interludes, but there is no rhyme or reason to what goes where. All the tunes sound improvised because they probably mostly are.

This set is a digital Tubby’s production, one of the last he did before passing away, and easily one of his finest. It being a showcase gives plenty of room for the riddims (and dubbing, with Fatman and Peego at the controls, not going overboard) to shine. There are few (if any) records with cleaner or more competent digi ragga production, it really is a shining jewel of the late 80’s style. Tresillo snares dance with e-piano skanks, the tempo is squarely in rocksteady territory, and there is a lot of clanging and clonking and tinking. By that I mean there are lots of synth instruments doing countermelodies and riffs that don’t sound like any particular real instrument, but all have a metallic, clanky sound to them. Then on the Ninga Mi Ninga version there is a ring mod on the bass with dead serious attitude. Suffice to say this album has character. Have I played up this one enough yet? When I first listened to this album I was in a car on a roadtrip with a bunch of backlogged records lined up, and when I heard Courtney Melody’s voice I thought ‘yeuch’ and dreaded a whole half hour of his style. But when I considered the ringmod and skankiness on Tubby’s cut of the Fever riddim, I knew in the back of my mind that it was going to grow on me. A dangerous type of record. Rougher than Rambo.

My picks: Ninga Mi Ninga, The Night Before, Ready For The World