NYAHBINGHI ALBUMS

History of Nyahbinghi

© Steve Barrow & Peter Dalton - The Rough guide to reggae

Kibir-Am-Lak Nyahbinghi (sometimes spelt 'nyabhingi' or 'nyabingi') music in its purest form is the music played at Rastafarian meetings or 'grounations', and is based around a style of relentless drumming and chanting. Sometimes a guitar or horns are used (ska musicians such as Johnny 'Dizzy' Moore and Don Drummond developed their approaches at such gatherings), but no amplification at all is employed.

Ras Michael The drumming, which usually involves three hand drums of different sizes (the bass, the funde and the repeater), exercised an influence on early recorded Jamaican music – the Folks Brothers' 1960 hit, "Oh Carolina", for instance. However, though the drumming style – and even the master Rasta drummer Count Ossie – appeared on major hits in the 1960s, nyahbinghi music was heard too sporadically to be considered a commercial trend until the computerized 1990s, when hard-core ragga deejays like Capleton, Shabba Ranks and Buju Banton chose to mouth 'cultural' concerns over rhythms that included traditional rastafarian percussion.

Grounation The one period in which Rastafarian ensembles regularly made records that were untampered by commercial considerations was the roots era of the 1970s. Though serious musicologists had made occasional field recordings of nyahbingi sessions, the first album to give the music the studio time it deserved, while remaining as true to its original forms as possible, was the triple LP set Grounation, from Count Ossie & the Mystic Revelation of Rastafari. The MRR was an aggregation of accomplished musicians which brought together both Count Ossie's African-style hand drummers and the horns and bass of tenor-sax man Cedric Brooks's Mystics band. This historic set has never been superseded, but the establishment of Rastafari as the dominant reggae ideology in the mid-1970s, plus the emergence of an audience for reggae albums that were more than collections of hit singles, created a climate in which more sets of nyahbingi-based music could be produced.

Cedric Brooks The most noteworthy of these were by Ras Michael & the Sons of Negus and the Light of Saba. The latter group was led by Cedric Brooks, who had played tenor sax, clarinet and flute on Grounation, as well as being its musical arranger. Ras Michael (b. Michael George Henry) was a drummer and singer who had been leading groups of Rastafarian musicians since at least the mid-1960s, and had spasmodically released music on his own Zion Disc label. The albums from both ensembles of percussionists, horn players, chanters and guitarists brought the music of Rastafarian meetings closer to the commercial reggae mainstream, initiating new musical hybrids that foreshadowed the concept of 'world music'. In reverse of the usual Jamaican practice, little music from either group appeared only on 45, but each produced at least one outstanding single. The Light of Saba's atmospheric instrumental "Lambs Bread Collie", featuring the trombone of Ronald 'Nambo' Robinson (also associated with the MRR), appeared in 1978 on their own label, and has become their most sought-after single track. Ras Michael's "Good People", a Studio One release from the same period, sounds as if the regular Brentford Road session musicians of the time were employed, but is no less inspired than previous work with the Mystic Revelation.

Nyahbinghi albums