Ranking Dread – Kunta Kinte Roots

Career

Winston Brown grew up in Rema and Tivoli, two of Kingston’s toughest communities, and he took the name Ranking Dread and built his reputation on the Ray Symbolic sound system before heading to London in the late 1970s. Once there he linked with Lloyd Coxsone’s operation and slotted right into the UK roots scene.
It was Burning Sounds, running things from Harrow Road in the middle of West London’s West Indian community, who gave him his recording home. They put out Girls Fiesta in 1978, his debut, with Linval Thompson handling production duties. Read the review here. Now they’re back with the follow-up. Kunta Kinte Roots, the second set Ranking Dread recorded for Burning Sounds, originally pressed in 1979, is getting a proper reissue this July and it deserves your full attention.

Rastafari vs Yardie Godfather

Here’s the thing about this album, and it’s something you can’t ignore when you know what came later in Ranking’s life. This is a deeply roots and Rastafari record. From the title onwards, which invokes Kunta Kinte as a symbol of African identity and resistance to Babylon, to the repatriation themes on Leaving Out of Babylon, to the spiritual weight of closing on the Satta riddim with Give Praise First, this is a man on the mic talking about Jah, about Africa, about the struggle. Which makes it more than a little striking when you know that by the mid-eighties, the same man was being called the most dangerous man in Britain and the number one Yardie Godfather, ending his days in a Jamaican prison in 1996. It’s one of reggae’s genuine ironies. But right here, on these eight tracks, the message is roots, reality and repatriation. You have to let the music stand on its own, and it does.

Riddims

The riddim selection is strong throughout. Four cuts ride the foundations from Gregory Isaacs’ Cool Ruler, recorded at Channel One Studios in Kingston in 1978. Run Them Jah takes Party in the Slum, Nursery Rhyme runs on Uncle Joe, Rainy Night in London borrows Word of the Farmer, and Natty Way of Living works on One More Time. That’s a lot of Channel One iron in one place, and it gives the album a coherent, muscular weight. The Isaacs originals are already stone classics, but Ranking Dread finds his own angle on every one of them.

More riddims

The Studio One lineage is present too. Leaving Out of Babylon rides Bob Andy’s Going Home riddim, a Coxsone foundation that’s been carrying tunes since the late sixties, and there’s real power in putting a repatriation lyric on top of that particular piece of music. The title track takes the Letter from Zion riddim, which fits the album’s themes perfectly. And Poor Glory works Gussie Clarke’s version of Bob Andy’s My Time rather than the original Studio One cut. Clarke’s arrangement has a different feel to it, more forward-driving, and it suits the track well.

Style and Fashion

Ranking Dread’s toasting style is cool and unhurried. He doesn’t force anything. There’s a drawling, almost conversational quality to his delivery that pulls you in rather than pushing at you, and it works beautifully against these heavyweight foundations. Kunta Kinte Roots is a record that knows what it is. Burning Sounds are doing right by their catalogue bringing it back. Don’t sleep on this one.