All my life I’ve been exposed to music. And then there’s my father, being part of reggae, one of the creators of dub music, Augustus Pablo.
I’m more like a mixer, a selector, more a producer, deejay. I started mostly doing trap, hip hop, funk. I kind of transitioned more focusing on reggae because – legacy and I just also enjoy playing reggae. I feel like I owe that to my father as well. But I play all music. And I prefer playing new artists who are unknown. That was my thing, always introducing new music to people, the audience and just, keeping that up.
I actually kind of grew up mostly immersed in hip hop because being in Harlem, growing up in New York, the Cam’rons of the world. I used to freestyle with my friends. My mother also exposed me a lot to the reggae side, going to concerts as a kid, very young, eight years old, seven years old, and then visiting my father, traveling to Jamaica for my summer breaks, for my winter breaks and he had a home studio. My father’s pretty much a legendary reggae producer. He was famous for the melodica, which is like a piano flute, which has become very popular lately. Supreme just [re]created the melodica.
He passed away when I was 10. His birthday was June 21st. He’s a Gemini, Cancer, very passionate, very loving. When I would visit him he would do his music around me, smoke chalice, actually encouraged me to smoke weed, made weed tea for me. He felt like it was a natural thing cause he was more of an herbalist, naturalist and it just kind of dictated his whole lifestyle.
He had myasthenia gravis, a nerve disorder. But I think since he was such a naturalist, he pretty much didn’t take care of himself in the way he should have. We had a friend, traditionalist named Baga and he would go to him for routine sessions like drinking roots and bitters, which is pretty much a root people drink and they claim it will clean you out. He would do those things and he felt like that was enough. And then he also had a leg condition that he suffered from. He used to actually wrap his leg with aloe vera, with actually the aloe plant. The wrappings and that probably would be a nice thing to do with other medical techniques, but I think basically his body just weakened over time and just probably with nutrition maybe lacking in that as well. He was vegetarian. Just a whole bunch of things probably added up. And I was a kid, so it was kind of like, I didn’t even know until I thought about it as an adult. Maybe he could’ve done a little bit more to maintain his health.
There was a movie called Rockers, which actually was based on the movement he created at the time. And the director said the movie was actually inspired by my father, but my father didn’t want to be in the movie. He was kind of shy. But that whole movement, that time period kind of represents my father’s musical emergence at the time, the seventies. So definitely his influence has lived on through that.
Legacies are not everything for everyone, but for me it’s always been like a thing
I feel like. It’s not going to be easy. It’s really, really difficult to get your respect as someone’s kid, once their father has passed away. For me it’s been difficult. But I’m not doing it for really respect, it’s more like I know I’m his daughter, my brother’s his son, we’re owed this and it’s ours. We don’t have to ask your permission, and I feel like we have to own it.
Isis Swaby, Harlem NYC
