Tuggawar is a young, dancehall artist from hackney london,whose story is so compelling, it would even get a Hollywood scriptwriter’s pulse racing.
The first to remember is that he’s no novelty act, but a deejay with serious skills. Tuggawar and confederates like Freedom – who does brilliant impersonations, by the way – produce tracks themselves, with most of the recordings having taken place at Tuggawar’s own studio in hackney London.
and the surest indication yet that this son of Greek and Irish parents is keeping it real, no matter the acclaim he’s already received in Jamaica itself.
“We had our own local sound when I was young,” he explains, “but I was always listening to tapes of Unity and then Saxon with Papa Levi, Smiley Culture, and Tippa Irie. From Jamaica, I used to listen to Super Cat, Ninjaman, and Johnny Ringo. I always wanted to be a deejay, and I started writing from very early. I do other music now, but I was into reggae more than anything else and still am, because reggae’s the foundation of musics like grime, drum & bass, and hip hop. All of them revolve around reggae, and they couldn’t exist without it, but those early dancehall pioneers had a massive impact on me. I think the standard of deejaying was higher back then, than what it is now. They took the trouble to write proper lyrics, and that showed in their records and what they were doing on sound-system, y’know?”
Just as any serious newcomer should, Tuggawar took time out to learn the art of deejaying properly, and he was therefore already well practised before his grand adventure really began, and he took his first trip to Jamaica.
”In 2001 I went down to Jamaica for two weeks, and ended up staying for a few years,” he says, laughing at the memory. “That was more by accident than design. I didn’t know anybody. I just went down there with my girlfriend, met some of her family and that was it. We arrived in Kingston, but stayed in Spanish Town, and it was real hardcore.
“Basically, I got jailed for weed out there, and was locked up with Jah Cure and Zebra in Spanish Town prison. I was on the same block as them, and they had a concert in the prison one Easter Monday. That was the first time I ever performed in Jamaica, and there were two thousand prisoners at that show! Jah Cure called me up on stage, I wrecked the place, and then Sean’s father told me I reminded him of his son, because he was in there as well. He was getting released two weeks before me, and said he’d arrange for me to stay in Jamaica, because they were going to deport me otherwise. He was willing to support me, so he contacted Roy Francis, who took care of the immigration people.
Roy then produced my first tune, Hot Gal, on Sly & Robbie’s Macca rhythm. It was after that I began hanging round Mixing Lab, and all these other artists would pass through. Lexxus, he was there one day, and asked me to voice on this rhythm he had. I said yes straightaway, and from that day onwards, we started rolling together. He brought me on stage at a lot of shows, and introduced me to a lot of producers. That’s how I ended up doing so many recordings, because whenever one of these producers wanted to voice Lexxus, he’d say to record me first.
I didn’t get any strong tunes from my time in Jamaica, but I did make quite a name for myself as a performer, and that’s how Laing came to book me on Sting and a good many other shows down there, including Vybz Kartel’s birthday bash.
“To give you an idea of how much work I was doing, I got released from prison in May 2002, and by September I was booked to perform at Sting for the first time. Then just before I left, I met up with Steely & Clevie, who offered me a recording contract, except due to some family problems here in England, I never got to sign it. After that, I began to build my own Pro-Tools studio, and apart from doing shows and recordings, I did a lot of networking as well.
His profile’s continued to rocket in the meantime, mainly thanks to MySpace and support slots on recent UK tours by Beenie Man and Busy Signal. After that debut in Spanish Town Prison, no audience on earth can worry him, and that spell behind bars inspired a good few lyrics as well.
Does it require a different approach, chatting on conventional rhythms?
“Well yes, but I grew up listening to Saxon and Unity, so it’s nice to include some original, one-drop, rub-a-dub style rhythms. Request To The Farmer is another like that, and was one of my biggest tunes when I was in Jamaica, because I was doing it round about the time of their election, in 2002. I remember hearing Seaga [Edward Seaga, the Opposition Leader, who’s of Lebanese extraction] declare that, ‘me nah born yah, but me for yah.’ I was listening to it on the radio with Gadaffi the producer, and said, ‘I can write a tune from that!’ Those were the lyrics that got me booked for Sting, because I’d go on stage and say, ‘me nah born yah, but me on yah, request to the farmer, who grow the yam and the banana. Down inna the west, me get my high-grade marijuana,’ and the crowds would go crazy. That was a massive tune for me down there.”
“Well, I’ve always seen myself as a hardcore deejay, but I like doing more melodic things too, I like showing my versatility on all types of rhythms, and sometimes taking a different kind of approach, rather than chanting on it, or deejaying. It’s like a sing-jay sort of style, and it’s a style I like, so if I feel that vibe from certain rhythms, I’ll keep doing stuff like that. No one’s really heard Tuggawar like that before. It’s different, y’know?”
His willingness to experiment goes hand-in-hand with owning his own studio, and it’s his long-term ambition to produce other, up-and-coming acts once his career’s better established.
it’s all about the positive vibes as well, and from I’ve got the studio, anything can happen…”
_______________________________________________________
