As a producer, bandleader, and artist, Lee Perry is responsible for shaping the transcendental sonic experience that is reggae and dub music, as well as opening new pathways for what the studio can do as an instrument.
Podcast by Movement Radio and Yannis-Orestis Papadimitriou
Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry passed away on August 29, 2021. As a producer, bandleader, and artist, Lee Perry is responsible for shaping the transcendental sonic experience that is reggae and dub music, as well as opening new pathways for what the studio can do as an instrument. A restless innovator made out of the word, sound, and power, a hi-tech animist and apocalyptic prophet, he is rightfully immortalized as one of the most important figures in 20th Century music.
This is ‘Obeah and Science for Lee Scratch Perry’, a special episode of The Archipelago honoring the life and legacy of the Upsetter. Adrian Sherwood, the legendary producer, founder of On-U Sound Records, and craftsman behind many of Lee Perry’s releases, talks about their last collaboration in the autobiographical album Rainford and its remixed version ‘Heavy Rain’, while also musing on his creative trajectory and his contributions to music.
Carolyn Cooper, a leading voice in reggae studies and founder of the Reggae Studies Unit in Jamaica talks about the Upsetter’s genius, his wide cultural influences and his unique position in the musical genre he helped launch into new sonic territories.
Patricia Chin, also known as Miss Pat, a person who helped make reggae history, first through Randy’s Records and the Studio she operated with her husband Vincent in Kingston and then through VP Records, the label they founded in New York in 1977, reminisces about Lee Perry’s innovations and her experience with his unique personality.
Louis Chude-Sokei, chair of Black Studies at Boston University and editor of the Black Scholar listens to the technology of Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry and speaks about the various different aspects that make him unique and how culture was translated to Lee Perry’s sonic creations.
Last, Jay Glass Dubs breaks down his rework of the show’s regular theme song as a tribute to Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry, in order to trace the breakthroughs the Upsetter has inherited to the world after his passing.
