When two sounds go to war: David Rodigan details his life as a sound clash King

From the very earliest days of soundsystems there has been intense competition. When two sounds go to war at the same dance, that’s a sound clash. It’s a battle that can last all night. The rival sounds compete for the adulation of the baying crowd – a bit like the gladiator contests in the amphitheatres of ancient Rome.

Clashing has developed its own strict rules. Typically, contestants play their best records in ‘rounds’ of half an hour each that are judged by the audience. Then the rounds are shortened to fifteen minutes before a final duel in which the performers alternately play their rarest and most precious dubplates, ‘one for one’, until a winner is declared. Strategy is crucial and the best sound clash combatants combine the wiles of a good chess player with the ring courage of a boxer.

Throughout the rollercoaster of my time at Kiss FM I was pursuing this other working life of soundclashing. For me to get involved in this world was highly unorthodox. Clashing was for the ‘sound bwoys’ who played on the big systems, not for radio broadcasters such as me. Even less for radio broadcasters who’d grown up in rural Oxfordshire.

One of the most significant [clashes] in my entire career was in Miami with King Waggy T, the number one selector in Florida. Miami is known as Kingston 21 or Little Jamaica, because of the massive Jamaican communities there and in nearby Fort Lauderdale. Waggy T is a Chinese-Jamaican who moved to Florida. He has the most amazing collection of dubplates and is well known for his seamless mixing when playing tunes. He was a selector who famously never spoke – he employed an MC to do all his talking.

This was billed as ‘The Clash of the Century’ and took place at the Mahi Temple, a Miami nightclub, on Bob Marley Day, 6 February, in 1993. There were around three thousand fans inside the place. “Tonight is going to be a night of musical pleasure... I’ve flown 6,000 miles to clash with King Waggy T, Florida’s ruling champion,” I told the audience. ‘Tonight you are going to hear music you have never heard before. Tonight, Miami, you are going to hear the most cantankerous, poisonous dubplates you ever heard!’

The hot dancehall producer Dave Kelly, who runs the Mad House studio in Jamaica, was crucial to me beating Waggy T. He arranged for a killer dubplate to be delivered, literally on a plate, in the wings of the auditorium just before the ‘one for one’ finale. A guy gave it to me and said, “This is for you, from Dave Kelly”. The dub was ‘No Retreat, No Surrender’ by the hot dancehall artist of the moment Daddy Screw. And it won me the clash.

That was the night when I first started to experiment with recorded sketches and the theatrical side of my sound clashing. It helped me get the upper hand – even though Waggy T is a great selector and a tough opponent. I recorded a newsflash in BBC style saying Waggy T had died in a sound clash at Mahi Temple. It was so well received that I started writing more funny scenarios that I would use in clashes.

I used a similar newsflash theme a few months later in Washington DC when I clashed with Emperor, the ruling sound from the American capital. When I beat them it caused a sensation in the Reggae sound clash world and people really started to take me seriously. My clashes with Barry G and Bodyguard had been friendly affairs but taking on Emperor was different. This was a hardcore ghetto dance with no prisoners taken and Emperor had a big reputation.

I flew out there on my own and the club was absolutely packed. Clash audiences are highly knowledgeable and there are strict rules – you automatically lose if you play a song already played by your opponent. When I beat Emperor everyone who followed sound clash culture knew it was a big deal.

After the early popularity of my recorded newsflashes people came to expect them of me. Skits on the themes of James Bond characters and spies became a particular speciality. Then I took it to the next level by appearing in fancy dress. I was drawing on my theatrical roots – but it’s a long way from the Rose Bruford School of Speech and Drama to the heat of a sound clash in the vast cavern of Club Jam Roc in New York. Inside that venue, hordes of hardcore fans from the United States, the Caribbean and even the UK had come to see me do battle with the toughest sound system in all Jamaica, the mighty Killamanjaro from downtown western Kingston was taking on David Rodigan from Kiss FM in London.

But I proved that night that some theatrical talent can be a valuable secret weapon in a sound clash. As we prepared to take to the stage, my opponent Ricky Trooper, who was selecting the records for Kilamanjaro, could not believe his eyes as I appeared before him dressed in an Indian turban. “What are you doing?” he asked me. Trooper is the fiercest and most competitive character you could meet in the soundsystem world. But this time he was completely thrown. I just laughed – he’d find out soon enough.

The clash was billed as ‘Jamaica versus England’ and the crowd was hyped up. They must have been as confused as Trooper by my Sikh costume. As soon as it was my turn to play I picked out a specially recorded skit in which one of my actor friends spoke as a broadcast newsreader. It started to play: “CNN headline news. Tonight’s top story: rumours have been confirmed that David Rodigan, the soundsystem serial killer, has landed in the New York area. Police and immigration authorities have confirmed reports that Rodigan is disguised as a Sikh taxi driver [Cheers and laughter from the crowd]. He was last seen driving a yellow taxi in the direction of the Jam Roc club in Long Island. Police are warning members of the public not to approach him, as he is armed and extremely dangerous.”

There are many Sikh taxi drivers in New York and suddenly the turban made sense. People were falling about laughing. I had the crowd on my side. After the newsflash I started playing my real dubplates, but still with the Sikh turban on. I began with an acapella of ‘The Lion Sleeps Tonight’ by the Jamaican vocal group ARP: “In the dancehall, the mighty dancehall... Rodigan’s gonna kill a sound tonight.” It turned into an epic clash that went on for around four hours. There was a clock on the wall and we started at 1.30am. It was round after round after round.

Ricky is an inspiring selector and very difficult to beat. Even when you have really given it to him he can make a speech that suggests to the audience that the tune you just played was of no significance. But that night in Long Island the dance was going in my favour, and he couldn’t take it. So he drew the race card at the end of the clash.

He played a dubplate, ‘Jaro Have No White God’, and then made a succession of comments about skin colour. He called me “Some little white boy” who “nah brush oonuh bloodclaat teeth”; he said the “black man originate toothpaste and toothbrush” and “when Rodigan talk to me, mi smell him breath through the bloodclat speaker”. He then lined up a record, shouting “Ayy! White bwoy!”

He played a track by Goofy, a jokey song about bad oral hygiene called ‘You Brush Yuh Teeth’, and as it finished he shouted “Stand up with Jah!” – a righteous cry that also punned on the ‘Ja-ro’ nickname of his sound. I was seething. “Stand up with who? Stand up with Jah? After bullshit like that. You’re a hypocrite. Now hear this.” I played Prince Buster: "Yuh pick him up, yuh lick him down, he bounce right back, Rodigan’s a hard man fi dead."

But I was furious, and made a speech. "I’ve got one thing to say to you. This was a sweet dance until you started on this colour thing. You know what you’ve done? You’ve just brought the whole thing down into the gutter. And you’ve spoilt the night! You’ve taken away the spirit from the dance, because you’re bad mind and mi finished with you!" He tried to stand his ground, even though people were starting to boo him. “Nuff man want to see Jaro dead. It not my fault that I have better tune dan dem and me is a better selector.”

I couldn’t understand why he had gone down that route after we had been playing for four hours. I suppose he was clutching at straws because I was winning and he knew that. It didn’t do him any favours because the crowd was perfectly well aware of the fact that I was a white man and Jamaicans know me as someone who has a passionate love of their music. Because of that I have never been disrespected in my career, which made this lone episode hard to take.

Ricky left the dance and the revered owner of the Killamanjaro system, Noel ‘Papa Jaro’ Harper, apologised to me and said he had tried to stop Ricky as soon as he started talking about race. Mr Harper, who founded the sound in 1969, naming it after Africa’s highest mountain, is a veteran of clashes over many decades, and he knew that tactic wasn’t going to work.

Years later I got to know Ricky better. When he wasn’t doing that nonsense he was a great selector. He said to me that I didn’t realise how tough it was for him. I was a white man from England, and if I lost a clash I could go back home undamaged because people would know I was first
and foremost a radio DJ. He asked me to consider his position. If he lost and returned to Jamaica as a black man playing on the legendary Killamanjaro sound, he would be taunted with: “Bwoy, you let white man beat you?” He said it was much harder for him. “Yeah, but you didn’t have to do that,” I said.

A couple of weeks later we had a rematch called ‘Come to Settle a Score’ in Fulham Town Hall in London. It was another epic struggle and was eventually declared a draw. I pulled a wicked dubplate on Ricky recorded for me by the dancehall artist of the moment, Red Rat, who had a huge hit called ‘Wrigleys’, which was another jokey song about dental cleanliness. The dub was customised and I told my opponent, “Trooper, don’t chew on my name like Wrigleys!” It ripped the town hall apart.

Rodigan: My Life In Reggae by David Rodigan with Ian Burrell is out now, published by Constable