Tokyo – A musical revolution in Jamaica has a connection to a bouncing rhythm of a portable electronic keyboard that is a creation of a Japanese woman.
The pattern that echoes Wayne Smith’s 1985 reggae hit, “Under My Sleng Teng,” comes from Casiotone MT-40, which went on sale in 1981, the first product Hiroko Okuda worked on. after joining the Tokyo company behind G. -Shockwatches.
“He’s a lot like my first child, and the boy did so well that he’s moving,” said Okuda, honored as “Sleng Teng’s mother” among reggae fans.
Sleng Teng is a form of digital music from Jamaica that began in the mid-1980s, as part of the rich repertoire of the record genre called “dancehall”. No one denies the key role played by artists like Smith and King Jammy, as well as the humble, battery-powered, $ 150 MT-40.
One of the rhythm patterns created by Okuda called “rock” on the MT-40 evolved into “Sleng Teng riddim”.
According to legend, Noel Davey, the Marley Brothers’ Grammy-winning keyboardist, got a MT-40 from a friend, who picked it up in California. Before, Davey was blowing on a Melodica portable keyboard for that sound.
Davey was playing the MT-40 and found the rhythm to Smith’s mega-hit “Under My Sleng Teng.”
And the rest is history, so to speak.
“Don’t plan,” Davey said when asked about that moment.
There are so many buttons on the MT-40, he was “encouraging”, he found it, lost it, then had to look for it and found it again.
“It was a research process,” he said from Kingston, Jamaica.
The power of reggae comes from its healing effect, like “therapy,” being music for the poor, for those who oppose apartheid, for the people, he said.
Davey, who has never been to Japan, said he would like to meet Okuda. The two share something in common: Just as he believes he has never been properly credited for his role in reggae history, he stressed that Okuda deserves credit for the Casio instrument.
This groove inspired much of later reggae, clearly heard in works by Sugar Minott, Ibo Cooper, Gregory Isaacs and Dennis Brown.
Michael “Megahbass” Fletcher, a Jamaican musician, said repetitive music is not inferior.
“It has its place,” he said, pointing to Sleng Teng on his bass. “A good song is a good song.”
Fletcher said other keyboards were also used to play Sleng Teng, such as Casio CZ-101 and Yamaha DX100, Casio’s Japanese rival.
“Sleng Teng will never die,” said Fletcher, who has performed or produced songs for Shaggy, Maxi Priest and Alborosie.
Okuda, whose undergraduate thesis at Kunitachi College of Music in Tokyo was about reggae, was one of the first recruits of Casio Computer Co. assigned to work on musical instruments, then a new sector for the company.
The company did not have many musicians, and she was the one who had training in world music. Okuda had immersed himself in reggae in the late 1970s, including going to Bob Marley concerts in Japan.
Okuda worked on six types of rhythms for the MT-40, including samba, swing and waltz, creating a bass line and a rhythm.
He also created two licks called “fill ins” to play between sections of a song, or at the beginning of a song, as in “Under Mi Sleng Teng”.
For the prototype, it initially had an even more cheeky punk-rock rhythm called “avant-garde.” Managers killed him as “too crazy.”
At least the “rock” pattern was approved, Okuda recalled laughing.
Casio’s main business was calculators, not keyboards, so Okuda’s invention didn’t make much of a difference to his business. Okuda said he is usually among a handful of women in a room full of men.
“I was a pioneer in many places, and there were the old ways of Japan everywhere. I had to fight every time,” he said.
She was never promoted to a managerial position and was never chosen for a business trip abroad. He has not traveled to Jamaica or anywhere else except China.
When asked if she has any advice for working women, Okuda noted that having a special skill usually helps. She also has a very supportive husband, who took on much of the responsibility of caring for the children.
That definitely helped, he said.
The family shares a love for music, and music always sounds at home. When they were younger, Okuda felt a little sad when her daughter and son saw her go out the door, singing, “Hi, ho, go, it’s the job she loves to go to,” following the tune. by Walt Disney. Snow White. “These days, they’re joking that they might win the Nobel Prize for MT-40
One of the latest Casio technology Okuda has worked on is Music Tapestry, which translates music that is played into a fluid visual image on your computer. The flowers float and flutter at the time of the notes. Circles, squares and triangles dance on the screen. Its date of sale is undecided.
No doubt none of the reggae musicians know that he is behind the MT-40. And how his MT-40 became part of such fantastic music is nothing short of “a miracle,” he said.
“If I can ever meet them, I just want to express my deep gratitude. I want to thank them for finding the rhythm and for using it,” he told The Associated Press.
Casio still sells keyboards. The CT-S1000V, which will go on sale in March, turns words into vocaloid singing. Smaller portable versions include dozens of preset rhythms.
In the 2010 model, the rock pattern was named “MT-40 riddim” in honor of where it all began.
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Yuri Kageyama is on Twitter https://twitter.com/yurikageyama
