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Pick of the Indies
MOOCHING through the shelves of Out On The Floor records in Inverness Street, Camden Town, I saw a copy of an album which reminded me of my teenage years. The front cover features a massive and well-toned Rasta, pegging it through some unidentifiable bushes, and it rang some bells.
It was the soundtrack to the film Countryman, a favourite of my brother’s when he was younger, and I asked Jake Travis, the reggae-loving record store owner, to slap it on so I could hear it.
So it’s with a fair amount of excitement that I discovered the film is one of the highlights of a season of Jamaican cinema at the Barbican.
The Barbican has dug up the classics of Jamaican cinema: all feature superb soundtracks which brought reggae music to a much larger audience.
It is hard to choose which one of the six films I most enjoy, but for music, Countryman is hard to beat.
It is the story of a Rastafarian fisherman who lives off the land, smokes large amounts of cannabis, and has superhuman strengths.
The hero rescues a couple from a plane that has crashed in the Jamaican countryside and has to hide them from the cops who want to use them as fall guys in a CIA plot.
However, forget the story. The soundtrack is one of the greatest I have ever heard, and includes amazing tunes by Toots and the Maytals, and the Lee Scratch Perry classic Dreadlocks in Moonlight.
Other highlights include The Harder They Come, starring Jimmy Cliff, Smile Orange, Rockers, One Lone and No Place Like Home – all massively popular films dating from 1976 through to the present day.
DAN CARRIER
• The Harder They Come season of Jamaican films is at the Barbican until April 12. www.barbican.org.uk/film/festivals.asp |
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