Vintage Voices | Irie Jamaican Christmas songs
Published:Sunday | December 15, 2019 | 12:00 AMRoy Black/Gleaner Writer
Jamaica, too, has its fair share of Christmas songs that entered popular music, some of which enjoyed top-10 ratings on the Jamaican charts. Faith D’Aguilar’s mid-1970s recording of Santa Ketch Up Inna Mango Tree remains a perennial favourite at festive events during the Yuletide season and is, perhaps, Jamaica’s best-remembered and best-loved Christmas song in popular music. In a seemingly comical song with colloquial phrasing, D’Aguilar sings about Santa’s arrival. She is adamant that it could never be down a chimney as we are accustomed to hearing, Jamaica being far removed from that culture. A mango tree would be more appropriate. “Why should Santa come down a chimney when we have none in Jamaica? A mango tree would be more appropriate,” she declared. Santa is heard exclaiming in the recording:
“Come help me down
Help me down to the ground
Santa say, ‘Come help me down
Come do your Christmas deed’.”
Recording at Federal Recording Studios, the songwriters – D’Aguilar and Pam Hall – ensured Santa’s safe arrival with:
“Lucky one donkey underneath the tree
The hampa fall pon the poor genie
The donkey start fe halla and bawl
Santa say, ‘Chu genie nuh worry at all’.”
D’Aguilar’s performance, both as songwriter and singer, was not surprising, given the experience she had gained in the Little Theatre Movement’s Pantomime. On a few occasions, she made commendable impersonations of folk icon Louise Bennett-Coverley during tributes in her honour.
Christmas in the Ghetto
Santa also featured prominently in the Carlene Davis-sung, Tommy Cowan-composed Santa Claus (Do You Ever Come To The Ghetto) – an impassioned plea to Santa and, by extension, the establishment to pay more attention to the poorer classes at Christmastime.
“Do you ever wonder why we suffer so? We would like to see where your reindeer go,” Davis declares in the recording. Recorded at Joe Gibbs Studio in 1981, it reached the top 10 on the Jamaican charts and topped the charts in several Caribbean countries.
According to Cowan, with whom I had an interview this past week, “The song’s relevance extends beyond the Yuletide season. It is speaking to the system generally. Where is the vision for the lower class? Where is the glimpse for our future? When Christ came, he visited the lower class (the shepherds) first, and to me, the shepherds would be like ghetto dwellers. I got the inspiration for the song some years ago as I was driving down Collie Smith Drive and observed the broken-down shacks. There was no Santa or anything to represent Christmas,” Cowan bemoaned.
Mek The Christmas Ketch You Inna Good Mood by The Home T-4 is also numbered among the top-selling Christmas songs in Jamaica’s popular-music history. It was released on the Joe Gibbs label in 1982 but didn’t reach the charts until the following year. However, a slip-up in the labelling of the song resulted in it being released with an incorrect title. The correct title, Christmas Mood, would equally have conveyed the message in the song when the group sings:
“If you have no money, I’ll let you have some of mine
Let the Christmas catch you feeling fine.”
The Boris Gardiner-led Rhythm Aces’ The Meaning of Christmas made it to No. 2 on the then Jamaica Broadcasting Corporation charts shortly after its release, close to Christmas 1960. Written by Boris’ brother, Barrington, it sought to describe what Christmas was all about by using each letter of the word to convey the meaning:
“C is for Christmas, the season of good cheer
H is for happiness to last throughout the year
R is for respect, which each and all should show
In this holy season wherever you may go
I is for indulgence to know how far to go
S is for Santa Claus, the children all do know
T is for toys for little girls and boys, around the world
Where they may be, he’ll find them joyfully.
M is for manger, the place where he was born
A is for angels who watch from dusk to dawn
S is for star that led three men from afar.”
The late radio presenter-turned-vocalist Neville Willoughby thrills thousands each Christmas with Christmas Ja. Adopting a calypso style, he proudly states in the song:
“We don’t have no snow, we don’t have not sleigh
But what we do have is Christmas Ja.”
And if ever there was a top-10 Jamaican Christmas song list, Alton Ellis’ Christmas Coming, done in the late 1960s, would surely be among that lot. A reworking of the Studio One classic, Sunday Coming, the song remains immensely popular at Christmas dances.
In 1982, Derrick Harriott joined the fray with Jesus Was Born Today with a perfectly blended arrangement, which he said “was a perennial big seller done at Federal Records”.
Christmas Time, sung by Reuben Anderson and surrounded by an exhilarating xylophone solo done in the New Orleans R&B style, is truly a gem in every sense of the word as it invites us to:
“Listen to the bells how they’re ringing
Listen to the wind how it’s blowing
It’s Christmas time again.”