root salad Trojan Records
A flagship for Afro-Caribbean heritage in multi- cultural Britain, says Garth Cartwright.
A
cross 2018 one British indepen- dent label got plenty of attention as it turned fifty. Trojan Records – the London label that popularised Jamaican music in the UK – got the royal treatment: coffee-table book, big box set and a very slick documentary feature to boot. Trojan only existed as a label that signed and promoted new talent from 1968-1975. Forced into bankruptcy, the label’s catalogue has since been horse-trad- ed over the years with all kinds of reissues appearing. Now in the hands of BMG, the German behemoth that has just purchased World Circuit, its new owners have decided to rebrand Trojan for today’s marketplace, thus the flurry of expensive activity.
There’s an irony in music aimed at Caribbean migrants in the UK now being packaged for a comfortably off collectors market – just as there has been with the bumper blues box sets and books over recent decades – but BMG deserve kudos rather than criticism for their efforts here as book, box and movie are all worthy achievements.
Laurence Cane-Honeysett, the Trojan authority who oversees the label (thus wrote The Story Of Trojan Records and compiled The Trojan Records Box Set – plus advised on the film), was one of many white working- class kids who grew up on Trojan in the late- 1960s. “I recall Trojan tunes being spun at Stamford Bridge every Saturday before kick- off,” he says of his introduction to reggae. The late-1970s ska revival allowed Cane- Honeysett to write on Trojan and this lead to the ultimate fan’s dream: working for Tro- jan. “I joined the label in 1992 and it’s been sold twice since then but, fortu- nately, the new owners have always kept me on.”
Trojan Records was founded in London in 1968 by two young Jamaicans determined to get the music from “back home” heard in the UK. Chris Blackwell and Lee Gopthal initially met through Blackwell renting office space in Kilburn from Gopthal in 1962. Blackwell quickly proved himself with Island Records and Gopthal, noting the profits, began distributing Jamaican 45s and setting up record shops to sell such. Combining forces as Trojan Records they set about establishing the likes of Jimmy Cliff, Toots & the Maytals, Desmond Dekker, Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry and many other notable names worldwide.
Trojan achieved amazing things quickly, even scoring pop hits with a handful of releases, and so helped broaden British appetites for music from beyond the UK/US axis. Ironically, the label’s decline would begin when Blackwell left (taking former Trojan artists The Wailers with him) to con- centrate on Island. Gopthal struggled on, a Jamaican Indian in a very white industry, but finally lost his label. While Cane-Honeysett’s book covers all the shenanigans surrounding Trojan across the decades in intense detail, the film Rudeboy: The Story Of Trojan Records, focuses on the label’s heyday, sug- gesting Trojan worked as a conduit for British race relations. 6 Music DJ Don Letts states in the film, “Trojan planted the seeds of our multicultural society on the dance floor.”
degree for black Britain in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s, I believe that its success provid- ed arguably the first tangible and irrefutable evidence of the positive influ- ence of Afro-Caribbean culture within British society,” he says.
T Two 1970 releases
“Suddenly, for the first time, people of Afro-Caribbean heritage, be they based in the Caribbean or the UK, were regularly appearing on TV, the radio and in the pages of the music press. Success and respect more often than not go hand in hand and the mainstream popularity of reggae music, and those who performed it, not only sent out an extremely positive and inspirational mes- sage to black Britons, but also ensured a
hat may seem a rather grand claim but Cane-Honeysett backs such an assertion. “In terms of how Trojan became a soundtrack to any
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degree of respect – which up until this time had been largely lacking – from their white counterparts.”
Rudeboy is refreshingly free of the rock star and rock journo talking heads that plague many BBC4 documentaries. Instead the film is narrated by the musicians, Trojan employees and fans (black and white) who were there during the label’s glory days. Even for those who are not interested in Jamaican music, Rudeboy will be of interest as it documents a pivotal time in British race relations – 1968 was the year Enoch Powell gave his ‘Rivers Of Blood’ speech – and, the film argues, it was music more than any- thing else that united youth. This is Rude- boy’s greatest strength – its weakness comes in reenactments of pivotal scenes in Jamaica and London which lend a corny biopic flavour akin to those made about Johnny Cash and Ray Charles. Lack of available footage is the movie-makers’ excuse and, admittedly, not much footage was shot of what was then a marginal music made for working-class youths.
Such qualms aside, Rudeboy is essential viewing for anyone interested in how roots music gets marketed beyond its home audi- ence. Combined with The Story Of Trojan Records, the little label that made a big impact is finally getting its dues.
“Record companies don’t often get this opportunity to repackage a label,” says Cane-Honeysett, “so BMG ensured that Tro- jan’s fiftieth anniversary was a unique cele- bration. Trojan’s legacy, all the things it stood for, is now being recognised.”
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