Manasseh contempory roots reggae recording artist and producer interviewed here by freeradicalsounds.com

Manasseh's productions have a timeless quality about them. For our latest release 'Nu Shoots Inna Roots' we've licensed 'Underground' Manasseh's reworking of the Curtis Mayfield classic. 'Underground' was recorded with legendary roots singer Devon Russell shortly before his untimely death and was one of Devon's last recording projects. Whilst out on tour to promote the release of 'Nu Shoots Inna Roots' it was 'Underground' that we chose to close the night on. It has that certain end of the night quality that not many records achieve.

In a career that so far steams back over seventeen years Manasseh has worked with everyone from Jah Shaka to Dido and has even produced a Roots / Dub seven inch single with the star of U.K breakfast TV Johnny Vaughn (But more of that later)

After twelve years running his weekly shows at Kiss FM and regular appearances on Radio One, Nick Manasseh continues to be an in demand DJ / Selector. It was before his recent show at Brightons Roots Garden that I finally caught up with the man called Nick Raphael AKA Nick Manasseh.

B. What's in store tonight then?
M. Right through from Ska to Dancehall to Roots and a bit of Steppers. I don't really play one style any more, just all things reggae wise. B. What's dropping heavy for you at the moment? M. Erm, there's a nice new tune from V.C from Jamaica, the guy that did 'By His Deeds'. There's a lot of nice roots music from Jamaica this week and a lot of good Ragga as well. Also some nice re - issues and some nice new English stuff as well. So yeah it's good at the moment.

B. Okay so with all this good music coming out all the time. Why do you think it is that it seems to get mostly ignored by almost all of the media? Do you think it's regarded as mostly a retro thing?
M. No, I'm going to be controversial and say that in a way it's not a bad thing that it gets ignored. Whenever Reggae threatens to become a hype it's difficult to sustain…. The guy from Peckings records, who were the first people to import Studio One into England once, said that " Reggae music was an every day music, it's not a big time music". I'm quite happy for it to be ignored by the media. I don't really wanna have to explain the appeal of some crazy tune to somebody whose never going to understand it. Fine let them ignore it. It doesn't even really get ignored in the rest of Europe. It gets a bit ignored in England because here it's very pop oriented, radio wise. With magazines they're not really interested. They've got the attitude "oh it's just more Reggae, we covered that in nineteen seventy whatever". So therefore once you cross it over with something it becomes something they can write about and actually they wrote a lot about Reggae when it was concerning The Gorillaz. That's fine, we can't get bitter about that shit. That's just the situation we live in and that's the environment that's created what we have now. Which is a kind of self-sufficient cottage like industry that's been going on and looking after itself for years and years. You can't persuade people to get into Reggae they either get into it or they don't. But if you look down there in that club now where I'm playing after this. There are loads of white girls of seventeen, eighteen years old you know, it is happening. It's interesting though when you get a phenomenon like the tune 'Who Am I' by Beenie Man being number one in the national charts. Which is entirely down to the buying power of young black girls basically. What can the media do with it, partically when it happens in a week when nothing is selling very much. It is undisputedly number one and all right Beenie Man wins a Mobo but that's about as far as it goes.

B. So what about the issue of corporate remixes which you've done quite a lot of. A practice that for myself goes slightly against the grain. I wondered what you had to say in defence of it?
M. My main defence of it is that it's money to be honest. However there are some bits of work that I've done that I really like and I regularly play them out in my DJ's sets. In fact the Echo Beach label based in Germany wanna put out an album of my remixes. The thing with remixes is that they're more diverse than my music would normally be. To be honest the whole remix argument is one that's hard to defend really other than that it's become a bit of a culture and the money it brings in is really needed. It's the remixes that pays for my own musical output, so it's hard you know, you have to do that stuff.

B. So talking about mixes and working for other people. 'Ali Baba' a classic reggae tune that you revamped and reworked a couple of years ago. I heard somewhat surprisingly that the anonymous vocalist on the record was none other than U.K comedian and star of breakfast TV Johnny Vaughn. What was the story behind that?
M. The story is that there was a kid that I grew up with called Jimmy Monk and I've known him literally since I was a kid. I met Johnny Vaughn and his scene when I was living in west London in about nineteen eighty-six. I used to do them a little ting basically and we used to hang out and have a laugh. Then three years ago Jimmy Monk calls me up and says, "We wanna do a version of Ali Baba with Johnny doing the vocal. Are you into producing him". I said yeah and he said, "Will you recruit the band" so I recruited the band, it's all live. I played the flute on it; Spry from The Investigators is on bass, Ritchie Stevens on drums, Gil Sang on keyboards. Also there's the trombone player from Zion Train and a guy called Jake on Sax. It was great and a really good laugh. It is Johnny Vaughn on the vocal, he does it really well. He's a very good actor and he acts being John Holt.

B. What blows people away is that Johnny Vaugn's not credited on the record and it is very good performance. You'd never guess who the vocalist was. Since you told us the story, people we've told have changed their position on the record, once they knew who sang it. Saying "Oh the vocals aren't that good" And I've said "It's just cause you know it's Johnny Vaughn now". I don't even like the guy when it comes to his jokes and TV persona but you can't deny it's an excellent vocal on that and the version drops super stylee as well.
M. Yeah right there was a funny thing about that. The mixing desk that we were mixing it on was so old that if you put your finger on any of the mutes to mute the track, when you took it back off again the button used to fly off across the room like a tidily wink. So it was really hysterical when we were doing big drops on the dubs. So it was quite hard to mix it down with bits of the mixing desk flying off in different directions.

B. There's a lot of nice guitar work on your records so who does the guitar work on the Mannasseh stuff?
M. I do a lot of the rhythm guitar stuff and I also work a lot with a guy called Dan Carey who does stuff under the name Mister Dan or Danmass. He does all sorts of stuff, he not exclusively a Reggae musician but he's well into it. He's done a lot of guitar for me, lots of lead stuff like the tune 'Be Grateful' by Danny Red. That was when I first started working with him when I first did Danny Red.

B. On our new compilation ' Nu Shoots inna Roots' we've licensed the tune 'Underground' from you. A track recorded with J.A veteran singer Devon Russell. Can you give us a sense of Devon Russell's history for those that might not have come across him ?
M . Not really in detail , he wasn't a particularly prolific singer , there aren't that many Devon Russell tunes - a few from Studio 1 , a few from the 'High Times' label - I'm 99% sure that he was a member of the J.A. vocal trio Cultural Roots - other than that I'm not sure, sorry.

B. How did you come to be working with Devon ?
M. As I remember , we had the idea of covering Curtis Mayfield's Underground and immediately thought of him because of his voice and knowing that he had covered other Curtis stuff . He had been down to the studio before , so I knew him anyway.

B. Are there more tunes available from your times working with Devon ?
M. Sadly not , although not long before he died , I went round to his yard and he played me all these tracks off of adat - with some nice vocals and just rough rhythm tracks We talked about me doing some work on some of those - I'd still love to do that .

B. So you're obviously a very prolific producer so what's dumping to tape at present?
M. I've spent ages and ages working on a new 'Manasseh Meets The Equaliser' album. Working on and off on it between doing other things. That record is now ready and has quite a lot of guests on it and in particular the guy I'm working with tonight Knatty P. Outside of that I did an album last year with a band in Portugal. It's doing really well and is beginning to attract some nice bits of international interest without anybody trying to hard. But really the main thing I'm working on when I get a chance to do it is the new Manasseh album. It's officially finished, the mixes are finished. I want to do some editing to it and then that's it done. We'll have to wait and see what people think of it. It's quite diverse that's all I'll say.

So watch this space for news of the new Manasseh Meets The Equaliser album. Lets hope Nick does one day get the chance to work on those long lost Devon Russell tracks. After our interview Nick was away back behind the wheels of steel entertaining a sold out night made up of all ages, colours and creeds. The night rocked in a reggematical mashed down stylee until the small hours. Dancing has always been at the heart of roots reggae music and tonight we were kept up on our toes until the very last play out groove. When the lights came up we spilled out into the cold British winter night with smiles on our faces and the warmth that is the roots rock reggae vibe in our hearts. The future of Reggae music is safe in the hands of the man called Raphael

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bimble@freeradicalsounds.com