TRACING THE CARIBBEAN ROOTS OF THE NEW BRITISH POP INVASION : A new generation of musicians mix soul, the reggae beat and rock

Dotun Adebayo, the effusive music editor of Britain’s leading black weekly, chuckles when he recalls the column he wrote recently about Jazzie B, the leader of Soul II Soul, whose sleek, dance-minded debut album is one of the hits of the season both here and in the United States.

“I said that Jazzie has a spirit that Margaret Thatcher would be proud of--and he got angry,” Adebayo, 28, says, sitting behind his desk at The Voice in Brixton, a rough, predominantly black working-class area of London.

“Jazzie thought I was saying he was a Thatcherite, so he pinned the article on the wall and threw darts at it. . . . But I wasn’t talking about politics. I was talking about how he lifted himself up . . ., changing the stereotype of the black musician in Britain and building a whole scene around his music and fashion.”

In the more trendy Camden section of London, Jazzie B is in his office, which is tucked away in back of the combination clothing shop and record store that Soul II Soul operates. Soul II Soul, he explains, is not just a musical group, but a sort of coalition of artists and merchants who deal in everything from music and fashion to philosophy.

A personable, outgoing man of 26 who speaks with the assurance and conviction of a charismatic minister, Jazzie B still doesn’t know if he likes the Thatcher reference. But he acknowledges the large role that self-determination and positive thinking played in helping him overcome the sizable odds against blacks in British pop.

“I didn’t know what a platinum record was when I was growing up,” Jazzie said, leaning over a desk still littered with memos and sales receipts from a meeting with his new accountant from Los Angeles.

“My dream was to be a DJ and play records at dances in our (West Indian) community. That’s the only future I imagined in music because there weren’t any black pop stars from Britain. But then Bob Marley came along and it was amazing.

“He was one of us (West Indian heritage) and he showed that we could be part of the larger pop world . . . that we could move beyond our own community-- if you worked hard. He kicked down the barriers for most of the black artists who are emerging today.”

The emerging artists that the Soul II Soul leader refers to represent a dramatic wave of talented musicians who operate in a variety of styles, but share a common, even revolutionary characteristic: they are black and British.

Twenty-five years after the Beatles kicked off the British rock invasion of America with “I Want to Hold Your Hand,” these artists are enjoying a popularity and acclaim here and in the U. S. that represents the early rumblings of a new British pop-rock invasion.

Among the more prominent names in a much larger class of artists that promises to contribute to the sound of pop and rock in the ‘90s: Soul II Soul, Neneh Cherry, Andrew Roachford, the Pasadenas, Paul Johnson, Mica Paris, the Christians, Hugh Harris, Blacksmith, Caron Wheeler as well as such American expatriates as Terence Trent D’Arby and Gail Ann Dorsey. (See accompanying mini-profiles on facing page.)

Like Jazzie B, most are second-generation West Indians whose parents moved here in the ‘50s and ‘60s and worked in domestic jobs, hoping to build a better future for their families. They were too busy establishing a new home to even think about a career in music.

But the second generation of musicians, most of them in their early to mid 20s, are pursuing their pop dreams with a passion and purpose that is reminiscent of the early wave of British rockers.

No one is claiming that a new Beatles is being uncovered, but the best of the new artists are invigorating personalities as well as richly promising talents. Cherry’s “Buffalo Stance” and Soul II Soul’s “Keep on Movin’ ” are both candidates for single of the year, and D’Arby’s second album (due Oct. 30) is one of the most anticipated collections of 1989.

Unlike their black American counterparts, artists such as Jazzie B and Roachford weren’t raised chiefly on gospel or soul music. Due to cultural background and radio programming patterns in England, they tend to lean as heavily on reggae, rock, pop and contemporary hip-hop as traditional soul.

Says Lincoln Elias, the young CBS Records talent executive who signed D’Arby and Roachford, “The impressive thing to me is that these artists aren’t all following the same musical path. They are dealing in all kinds of rock, soul and pop, and they are just getting started. The whole scene is going to get a lot stronger. Most definitely, America, the British are coming.”

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White musicians in Britain have long been infatuated with the black components of American rock ‘n’ roll. Even before the Beatles, Lonnie Donegan, the star of the British skiffle movement of the ‘50s, made the Top 10 both in England and in the U.S. with an energetic folk-blues version of Leadbelly’s “Rock Island Line.”

Joe Cocker, Steve Winwood and Rod Stewart, to varying degrees, later provided some of the first positive responses to the old question: Can a white man sing the blues?

This new group of musicians is answering a question that once seemed equally dubious: Can a black singer from Britain be taken seriously?

“For years, people would hear a black singer in Britain and say, ‘Well, he’s OK, but he’s no so-and-so,’ and you could fill in the name of any Motown star,” Elias explains, relaxing in a CBS office covered with posters of acts he has signed and such personal heroes as James Brown and Jackie Wilson.

“If you were talking about a black English crooner, people would say, ‘Well, he’s no Marvin Gaye.’ This was true of black kids and white kids, and the same with record companies. Whenever you thought about blacks doing pop music, you looked to America. A lot of it was just snobbery.”

Roachford, the leader of a highly regarded band that carries his last name, said a lot of black British singers in the ‘70s and early ‘80s did tend to be parodies of American soul singers, but that some promising British black artists were simply ignored by record companies.

“Companies just don’t like to take risks and they saw British black musicians as a risk because there was no successful history of them,” he said in a separate interview at CBS’ offices in chic Soho Square, where Paul McCartney also maintains his office.

“A few artists were signed, but they were mainly marketed to the black community and their success didn’t wake people up to the talent that was developing here. But what’s happened in the last few months has shown there is a scene. I don’t think a company would think twice now about signing a black act. In fact, a lot of them are now racing to find the next D’Arby or Soul II Soul or (smiling) . . . Roachford. We’ve become a priority.”

These artists aren’t the first black musicians from Britain to gain attention in the U.S. Jimi Hendrix, the legendary rock guitarist, was born in Seattle, but he launched his career here in the ‘60s.

Hot Chocolate, a pop-flavored British group, had a series of Top 40 U.S. hits in the ‘70s, including “Everyone’s a Winner.” Other successes include ‘80s hit makers Billy Ocean, who was born in Trinidad, and Sade, a native of Nigeria. Additionally, various reggae groups (Aswad, Steel Pulse) and funk-oriented groups did well in Britain.

But none of this contributed to a momentum in black music similar to what is happening here now.

The roots of the current eruption can be traced to the arrival here in the late ‘50s and early ‘60s of an estimated 250,000 blacks from then-British islands in the West Indies--notably Jamaica, Barbados and Antigua.

The newcomers mostly took domestic jobs and a good many headed for Brixton--a working-class area of London with cheap housing, good access to subway and bus routes and a steady demand for lower-paid workers.

Music was an important part of community life. The new residents brought records from back home--ska, reggae and calypso--and they also imported “sound systems,” the name in Jamaica for mobile DJ units that would be set up for dances in warehouses or social halls.

“The sound system was part of my culture,” Jazzie B said, in the Soul II Soul office, speaking over the music from a rap record on the store stereo. “By the time I was 15 or 16, there was a sound system on every single street in the community. I’d guess at least eight out of 10 black kids would be involved in one way or another in a sound system.”

With no money to buy his own sound system, Jazzie B built one. While other kids in wood shop class were working on tables and chairs, he built speaker cabinets and turntable frames. He also bought an electronics manual and built an amplifier.

While his brothers drifted away from music into more conventional jobs, Jazzie B stuck to it. His parents--from Antigua--were not pleased when he quit school.

“They had worked hard at domestic jobs all their lives, so they could help their children have the education that would give them a better life,” he said. “It was hard on them for me to then turn around after all they had done for the family and say, ‘I don’t want it--I don’t want to be a mechanic or a carpenter. I want something else.’ They thought I was just going to waste my life.”

Jazzie B, however, worked hard to gain the skills necessary to compete in the music business. His story is typical of the ingenuity and enterprise of many of the new crop of black artists here--pioneers, of a sort, who forged their own musical identities and opportunities rather than simply follow proven routes.

He took courses in sound engineering and got a job recording “talking books for the blind” at the National Institute for the Blind to gain experience in the studio. By the early ‘80s, he was working as a tape operator in a leading London recording studio.

During most of this time, he and some old neighborhood pals were operating on the London underground music scene--a large network of informal clubs, import record shops and pirate radio stations. (No relation to the “pirate radio” format in the United States, these are hit-and-run endeavors that operate without a license and are under constant threat of being closed down by the government. They were important in the development of the new black music consciousness here because they provided far more exposure for the music of this underground dance scene than authorized British radio.)

By the time Jazzie and Soul II Soul co-founder Daddae started holding Sunday “sound system” dances at the Africa Center, Jazzie was one of London’s most celebrated DJs.

“There were queues around the block and the people were serious about the music,” CBS’ Elias says of the Africa Center dances. “It wasn’t a place where teen-agers went to find a girl or vice versa and just stand at the bar and pose. They went just to dance. If you didn’t dance, man, you just felt left out.

“I’ve always thought of the scene there in terms of the Cavern Club in Liverpool when the Beatles were starting out. It wasn’t a manufactured thing. In fact, the dances weren’t even advertised. It was all word of mouth, which made it better because there was a sense of discovery about it.”

Unlike those sound systems that concentrated on either reggae or soul music, Soul II Soul incorporated both sounds--a prototype for the classy blend of various dance music currents on Soul II Soul’s “Keep On’ Movin’ ” album, which is nearing 1.1 million sales in the United States alone.

Jazzie B also influenced fashion. One of the hottest pop-related items around London these days is the Soul II Soul T-shirt, with a distinctive logo featuring a cartoon character with the unruly dreadlocks, a la Jazzie B and partner Daddae. The shirts are sold in the Soul II Soul store, along with selected dance albums and some Afro-Caribbean crafts.

Jazzie’s hair style--dreadlocks on top and shaved sides--has also become a fashion statement around Brixton, though the Voice’s Adebayo says traditional Rastafarians, who wear dreadlocks as a religious statement, branded the style as blasphemous when Jazzie introduced it last year.

This emphasis on style, concept and music has led some pop observers to be call Jazzie the Malcolm McLaren of the dance scene in London--a reference to the former Sex Pistols’ manager who also integrated fashion and music.

Some use the comparison to suggest a calculation on Jazzie B’s part.

“Jazzie’s even got this social concept of brotherhood, a ‘happy face, thumping bass / for a loving race.’ That was all planned. He didn’t just come up with those lyrics by accident,” Adebayo said. ‘He’s a very shrewd businessman. That’s why I said the spirit of Thatcher is alive in him.”

Jazzie doesn’t shy away from talking about business--”I’ve seen too many examples over the years about how blacks have been victimized by the record business to not keep an eye on business,” he said. “My manager is Don Taylor, who used to work with Bob Marley, and he has told me a lot about what goes on.”

Still, he professes the uplifting, brotherhood message of the music is genuine.

“People like Curtis Mayfield were a very strong part of my life,” he said. “His songs with the Impressions about getting ahead and improving yourself.

“Those weren’t just songs to me. They were knowledge. I used to carry my records right along with my school books.

“I don’t just remember the music at the Africa Center (dances). I also remember the people. It was like a religion . . . all those people sweating and dancing and partying together. It was very inspiring. That’s what I tried to put on our album--that same sense of unity and spirit.”

Roachford leans out a window of the CBS’ Soho Square office offices and points to a tiny side street and a building that used to house a small jazz club, where he played piano as a teen-ager with his uncle.

“I wasn’t thinking about the future . . . why there weren’t more blacks on record here,” said Roachford, an intense young man with closely cropped hair. “I was just doing what I wanted. My family is from Barbados and I was kind of born into music.”

Unlike Soul II Soul’s sleek dance music, Roachford’s music has a tougher rock connection.

“A lot of black people over here were wary because they had, I suppose, the feeling that rock music wasn’t black music and that I was desperate for success and doing something I didn’t really believe in,” he said.

By the time Roachford’s album was relased last summer, however, the band had found an audience.

While the Voice’s Adebayo acknowledges Soul II Soul has had more commercial success so far, he feels Roachford will eventually prove to be the more important musical force.

“I think he is going to be the way for--not just black music in Britain, but white music as well,” said Adebayo, whose parents are from Nigeria.

“But the important thing isn’t just who eventually emerges from this group, but that the consciousness of the British pop audience has been changed.” Now it is very difficult to say you love (American soul acts like) Luther Vandross and Alexander O’Neal when British kids have Soul II Soul and Roachford and Neneh Cherry and the Pasadenas and D’Arby, even though most people think of Terence more as an American.”

CBS’ Elias looks at the stack of tapes on his desk; most of them dropped off by young hopefuls aware that Elias had signed D’Arby, Roachford and the Pasadenas. He pauses, as if awed by all the dreams represented in those reels of tape.

“Looking back, I don’t think you can put all the blame on the lack of a strong black British pop movement on record companies and snobbery,” he said.

“A lot of the acts who came through weren’t really prepared and they had a chip on their shoulder. It was as if they expected to fail. That’s what I liked about Terence. He wasn’t negative about his chances. He was ready to take on the world--plus he had the most moving voice I had ever heard.

“It’s the same with Roachford and the Pasadenas and Neneh and Soul II Soul and the others. They had to want to make music so badly that they didn’t worry about the barriers. And the word is out.”

There is only the trace of a grin on the face of CBS’ Elias when he repeats his “the British are coming” line.

“I really do believe we will be challenging you guys in America,” he said. “You can buy a little four-track system in England for (about $700) now and it’s amazing. One of my cousins is just 12 and he has one.

“When I was his age, I was standing in front of the mirror, playing ‘Jumping Jack Flash’ and pretending I was Mick Jagger. Now, he’s making his own records.”

AMONG THE MOST PROMISING:

SOUL II SOUL

With co-producer Nellee Hooper, Soul II Soul’s Jazzie B has delivered in “Keep on Movin,’ ” one of the most enticing dance albums of the ‘80s. It blends African, hip-hop, reggae and contemporary disco with such seamless sophistication that it seems too limiting to label the album just “dance” music. One of the half-dozen best albums so far in 1989.

NENEH CHERRY

Though born in Sweden and raised in New York, Cherry, now 25, has lived in London for nine years and is musically aligned with the city. After a brief spell in the funky, experimental Rip Rig and Panic band, she made her solo debut this year with “Raw Like Sushi,” which is an elegant, yet witty and thoughtful work that defines youthful, dance-oriented pop at the moment.

HUGH HARRIS

Even more so than Roachford, Harris--whose family is from Jamaica--leaps unreservedly into the intense, introspective stream of rock singer-songwriters, a la Elvis Costello and Graham Parker. His debut album, “Words for Our Years,” which is due Oct. 31, combines gripping vocals and biting themes about human relationships and desires.

MICA PARIS

Nothing hits your heart like soul music, Paris declares in one of the brighter tunes from her debut album, “So Good.” While you wish Paris (who is also of Jamaican heritage) would inject a bit more blistering soul in this diet of sometimes too steady pop and jazz, the best tracks on the album suggest a singer with solid vocal credentials and a frisky spirit. Hot track: “Great Impersonation (of a Good Guy).”

TERENCE TRENT D’ARBY

A marvelous singer whose purity and command recalls Sam Cooke, American expatriate D’Arby attracted almost as much attention for his flamboyance and brash interviews as for the music on his 1987 debut. This sets him up for a fall when his much anticipated follow-up is released Oct. 30. But the spectacular work should guarantee him a place among pop-rock contenders of the ‘90s.

GAIL ANN DORSEY

Though her debut album, “The Corporate World,” was widely hailed here by critics, Dorsey--a Philadelphia native who now lives in London--shares Roachford’s pledge to make her next album funkier and rawer. Key moments on the first album drew favorable comparisons with the angry, folk-flavored commentary of Tracy Chapman and the musical boldness of D’Arby.