Kid Hops
Sat Oct 9,
Chop Suey,
8 pm, $20 adv.
Sister Carol is what was once called a toaster--the Jamaican ancestor of the American rapper. In the way that the early emcees of New York City used to rhyme over disco hits like Chic's "Good Times," the even earlier toasters of Kingston Town rhymed over reggae hits like Johnny Osbourne's "In Your Eyes."
By the time Carol released her first record, Liberation for Africa (1982), toasting had been around for more than a decade in Jamaica and was soon to begin the process of dumping the instrumentals of hit records for the original, hyper-digital dancehall beats that have recently become popular in America. Carol was significant, though, because there were (and still are) so few (if not just two) recognized female toasters. (The other woman being Sister Nancy, who is famous for "Bam Bam.")
Though, like American rapper Queen Latifah, her present style is confident and heroic, when Carol first began toasting her style had a frail, almost bird-like quality that expressed, at every opportunity, her politics (democratic rule, black economic empowerment), religion ("every morning I wake up I give praises unto Jah"), and apprenticeship (how, when, and why she became a toaster). The masterpiece in Carol's long career is, of course, Black Cinderella, which was released in 1984 and contains her biggest hit, "Black Cinderella," a song that has at its center one of the most famous lines in all of dancehall: "Say dat a I'm a black Cinderalla/who haffi burn up nuff sensimilla/mi never have no ferry god mother/only the blessings from fi mi sweet Jah Jah." Sister Carol is the mother of dancehall.
