![]() ![]() If you ever feel you can’t do it, you feel helpless. Until they put me in the earth, I have a conviction … being a father, you feel like you are responsible for your children and want to protect them 24/7. “People want to start things and don’t know how they are going to finish it. The idea is to set a good example for them,” he said. I was concerned, too, but I realised David could take care of himself and I stop worrying. “There are some dangers in this business and I was kind of protective. Having watched the sound system culture evolve over the past five decades, he, the Killamanjaro team and his family, have had their fair share of teething troubles but he asserts, “children grow up fast and they see everything you do”. ![]() I didn’t know I could and would end up making money from it, but it is because I was dedicated to it why it has grown into the sound it has become.” FAIR SHARE OF TROUBLE He said that, when the business started, it was focused mainly on creating dubplates for the purpose of promoting Jamaica’s reggae and dancehall music and for the use in clashes but, as it became recognised as a leader and with a name like Killamanjaro, other sound systems thought the only way to prove their strength and competence was to “kill the sound in clash”, he said. The first piece of equipment he purchased when he graduated high school and started working was an amplifier. The dream to own a sound system was one he never let go of, even when his peers jeered him. Papa Jaro, who was exposed to music in his household, shared that his father was an aficionado and his older brother owned a small sound system. It’s not an easy thing and, if you don’t have the love for the music, you not going give the sacrifice it requires.” “I have heard some persons jump into the business say that they regret it, and that ‘if dem did know is so the business did stay, they wouldn’t have pursued it’. Sign up for The Gleaner’s morning and evening newsletters. He noted that there is a lack of attention to details, which is needed to set a good foundation and propel the sound system culture in a lucrative direction. “I don’t know if I have any responsibility but all I know is, whatever I do, I am going do it to the best that I can,” Papa Jaro told The Sunday Gleaner, adding that he is “a little concerned about the people who come into the industry” after him. The Jamaican sound system, which stamped its name as a producer of classic reggae dubplates and a leading sound system in clash culture since the early 1970s, is still ‘firing’ and Papa Jaro is widely respected as a patriarch in the industry. I am father for David (and the rest of my children),” quipped Noel ‘Papa Jaro’ Harper, founder of Killamanjaro. “I never see myself as a ‘Father of Sound’. The work of these sound system fathers has been sustained by a succession of ‘sons’ who continue to “do it for di culture” on a global level). ( It’s Father’s Day in the year of Jamaica 60 and, as part of the jubilee celebrations, The Sunday Gleaner’s Entertainment section is featuring the sound system culture, which was born in Jamaica in the late ‘40s and ‘50s through the creativity of the great pioneers. ![]()
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