{"id":10218,"date":"2025-02-21T11:53:40","date_gmt":"2025-02-21T11:53:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sandbox.reggaenorthca.com\/?p=10218"},"modified":"2025-02-21T11:56:11","modified_gmt":"2025-02-21T11:56:11","slug":"rasta-cannot-die-says-bongo-herman","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sandbox.reggaenorthca.com\/?p=10218","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Rasta Cannot Die\u2019, Says Bongo Herman"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;Nuh mek nobody tell you &#8217;bout Rastafarianism a dead inna Jamaica. Rasta cannot die! Reggae lives forever,&#8221; he said. However, Herman suggested that &#8220;there shall be a famine, not for raiment, not for shelter, but for the word&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;So nuff time you nah go hear nothing, for Rasta used to go all &#8217;bout and street corner and keep meeting fi gather souls. It&#8217;s a different time now, you have to just know. Some come, while some [were] sent. Rasta live forever, and the culture can&#8217;t dead,&#8221; he said.<\/p>\n<p>When asked about reggae&#8217;s role in sustaining the culture, he clarified that &#8220;Rasta was before reggae&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;But out of Rasta came forth reggae. And some man nah play reggae, dem a play &#8216;streggae&#8217;,&#8221; he said. Reflecting on the evolution of music production, Herman noted that recordings back in the day was &#8220;reel to reel tape, so it&#8217;s a different thing&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Now man use drum machine; when them done, him overdub. Back in the day, [it was all about] live, like how you see them man yah a do now. Live music. You feel the human structure.&#8221; Herman has worked with many of the big names in reggae, including the genre&#8217;s king, Bob Marley. He reminisced about playing football with Marley, sharing a cherished photograph of their time together.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;See me and Bob yah. A the final game dis him play before him go England, when the guy dem a threaten him up by 56 Hope Road. We used to play ball everyweh, me and Bob a come from Trench Town,&#8221; he recounted. Speaking of the reggae legend, Herman opined that the Marley legacy remains strong because, like their father, Marley&#8217;s offspring put in the work to rehearse, resulting in a superior sound for their projects.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;You have a lot of musicians they don&#8217;t go and rehearse. They go straight into the studio and record; that&#8217;s why it is not the same. When you rehearse you get a whole entire feeling,&#8221; he said.<\/p>\n<p>Recalling his own contributions, Herman said that the music of previous decades, including the &#8217;60s and &#8217;70s, cannot die.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Listen to them. Burning Spear, the whole of them, and me play pon most of them song deh.\u00a0<em>\u201c<strong>Book of Rules\u201d<\/strong>,\u00a0\u201c<strong>Liquidator\u201d<\/strong><\/em>, most of dem I play pon dem. Me DJ pon dem,&#8221; he said. Among his core memories is playing for Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie I on his historic visit to the island.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Me glad that I did go and meet His Imperial Majesty [in] 1966 at the airport and play drum for him and witnessed the thunder and lightning clap before the plane landed. And when the plane landed and the whole a we wet up, and by the time His Majesty come off the plane and come out, the whole a we dry back. Mi see certain things fi miself, nobody nuh tell me nothing &#8211; the history is long,&#8221; he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;Nuh mek nobody tell you &#8217;bout Rastafarianism a dead inna Jamaica. Rasta cannot die! Reggae lives forever,&#8221; he said. However, Herman suggested that &#8220;there shall be a famine, not for raiment, not for shelter, but for the word&#8221;. &#8220;So nuff time you nah go hear nothing, for Rasta used to go all &#8217;bout and street [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":59,"featured_media":10215,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[239],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10218","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-international-news"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sandbox.reggaenorthca.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10218","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sandbox.reggaenorthca.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sandbox.reggaenorthca.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sandbox.reggaenorthca.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/59"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sandbox.reggaenorthca.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10218"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sandbox.reggaenorthca.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10218\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10219,"href":"https:\/\/sandbox.reggaenorthca.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10218\/revisions\/10219"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sandbox.reggaenorthca.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/10215"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sandbox.reggaenorthca.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10218"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sandbox.reggaenorthca.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10218"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sandbox.reggaenorthca.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10218"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}