“The first thing that made people feel alive was the frequency. But then the media took control and they took all the best DJs and put them on Radio 1. Pirate radio stations and independent record labels are all trying to find the vibration. The vibration of sound and the vibration of life.
“When I’m working with music, I’m working with the vibrations of sound. Whereas with a lot of people, it’s vision. They see a pop band and they want to look like it and move like it because it looks good.
“Now with video, the eye becomes the ruler over the ear. You’ve heard artists before that you would say are absolutely rubbish. But because the tune is catchy and it’s sold to us on Top of the Pops, I’ve ended up singing it.
“Everybody is moving to a beat that’s being played. Look around you at everybody and they’re all moving to a specific beat. I see the way people move and I represent that. It comes off them and I feed off that. They move differently because they hear what I’m doing.
“I play the rhythm here and people in France change the way of France. They interpret it in the way that they walk. It came back to me and I could understand. C’est va bien! Ce va beaucoup!
“I reproduced the frequency in New York. They went crazy. In fact it started to vibrate off all of the girls and all the guys and it started to make a movement until it actually became visual and you could see it in their body language. I would say I worship God through the rhythm.
“Some people got angry about it because they were going into a frenzy and they were losing control and the rhythm was taking over. They wanted to make a statement: ‘You don’t control me’. Being aggressive because that rhythm was taking them and they have no control over it.
“I was hated by the person that had a lot of money and could buy any drum set they wanted to. I was hated. Because they [weren’t] a frequency scientist. They didn’t really listen.
“The thing that was so important to me was muscle memory. I had amazing rhythms anyway because I came from Jamaica and I came from Birmingham. I’ve become a silent master of [the frequency]. It’s only the sound that will change the day.
“We never used samples, we made our own. On the first album, one of the tracks we made used coconuts on my friend’s kitchen floor tiles. Another one we put the microphone in a rubber glove in the bog and flushed the toilet.
“Nature taught me a lot. People are beautiful because they are in their natural surroundings and they are at the calling of nature. They say here’s my hand and here’s my heart. I don’t understand you and what you’re doing, but I like you.
“I have changed the world by playing with sticks on different things that I could find.”
Ninjah and Corporal Clark star in this video made in loving memory of Cardiff legend, The Shaky Hand Man
Image Top: Courtesy of TANTRUM recordings
