CHANCES ARE!

This is CB from the original Randy's crew at 17 N. Parade, Kingston. A few years back, after I had moved to Brazil, CB told me that he once had met a brazilian that came in the shop in the 80's and that they had built a pretty strong relationship. In fact, the relationship was strong enough that the brazilian gave CB a necklace that he still wears to this day. They somehow lost touch, probably lost phone numbers or changed digits and on my last visit to the island he had asked me to take a picture of the necklace and carry it back with me in case I ever ran into the man or heard anything on his whereabouts.

So I did so and told myself: "what are the chances of that ever happening??". I mean Brazil is a huge country and most of the Sounds are concentrated in Sao Luis, Maranhao, in the northeast part of the splendid land while I dwell in Sao Paulo, just a few thousand miles south of that.

Well it's saturday night and I've had a long week, called a few friends over to listen to some tunes, drink a few geladas (ice cold beers), and have some laughters. Suddenly the question came up; "Anything going on tonight? any sounds anywhere?". None of us had any idea so I decided to jump on the net and check a few local sites for something worth checking out when I eventually came accross this flyer!

It really took me a few minutes to realize: "waiiiiiit a minute... I've seen that name before!" and then it hit me. I started digging thru a box of photos as I was telling friends about this exact story searching for the ones posted above. Since I had made a promise to CB and this was our chance to meet, we packed up and gwaan!

When we reached the dance there was a line outside the venue of about 200 people and you could feel the low ends vibrating on the concrete. After a half hour wait we finally made it in, and SUPER MUSICAL JAH was at the controls claiming that tonight there would be no repeats and that the arsenal was large. However, I don't know if he got lost in his speech or distracted by the folks getting on stage to chat his ears out, but he DID manage to play a chune twice at a 20mins interval and the tunes where pretty "soft", to put it lightely. Then it was the turn of FM NATTY NAYFSON, the 3 times Champion of Maranhao, and what people call the Prince Of Reggae. Just from the very first tune he played it was a Boom! The bass was super criss as the rocksteady chunes flew off his sleeve and that was really key due to the size of the speaker boxes.

Natty Nayfson pulled some dubplates like I've had never heard before, or could have even dreamed of hearing! He did a session with strictly exclusives from Jamaica & the UK that made me think about what rocksteady clashes could have been in the early years. And if that was not enough, he played a special that asked the people to vote for him as best Radiola (Sound) selector with a catchy "punch 4-4-2-2-2!!" (digita quatro, quatro, dois, dois, doiiiiis).

As I was on my way out I complimented Natty and flashed the photo with the necklace on it. He flipped! just as I had predicted he had lost all his contacts and did not know how to go about reaching CB ever again. I blessed him with the number and drove home feeling pretty amazed about the whole evening I must say. This world, is truly small and wonderful. Cherish it!