“Strangest feeling I’m feeling/But Jah love we will always believe in/Though you may think my fate is in vain/’Til Shiloh, we chant Rastafari’s name.”
These two lines, delivered in a fervent a cappella, comprise the entirety of the first track on Buju Banton’s 1995 album ’Til Shiloh. The legendary deejay’s raspy voice—until then typically heard booming from the towering 10,000-watt sound systems of open-air dancehall sessions—seemed instead to conjure the resonant wooden chancel of a church; the way it rose in tone, from hushed to beseeching, gave it the unmistakable contour of a prayer, an entreaty aimed at once inward and skyward. Taken on its own, it might easily be heard as a snatch of gospel music, yet the divine names Jah and Rastafari placed the song squarely outside the strictures of mainstream Christianity.
Banton was then Jamaica’s most prominent artist and reggae’s rawest voice—whether measured in the sheer volume of his thundering basso or the unfiltered sex and violence of his lyrics. But “Shiloh,” just 18 seconds long, signaled a shift. If this first track contained within its mesmerizing tranquility a half-formed question about what sort of album might follow, the second—“’Til I’m Laid to Rest”—offered a definitive answer. Opening with wordless vocalizations reminiscent of Ladysmith Black Mambazo’s traditional Zulu harmonies, it was anchored solely by Nyabinghi hand drums.
Atop this self-consciously traditional accompaniment, Buju unveiled a vocal declamation that was shockingly inventive in form, adapting his signature deejay style—a gruff baritone polyrhythm more closely associated with dance-friendly catchphrases—to a classic protest song: “Oh, I’m in bondage, living is a mess/I’ve got to rise up, alleviate the stress/No longer will I expose my weakness/He who seeks knowledge begins with humbleness.”
The effect was electrifying, combining the gritty emotional pull of a blues lament and the mystic aura of the best roots reggae with the rhythmic dexterity and extemporization of a soundclash champion. Producer Bobby Digital would later issue this rhythmic bed as a juggling riddim, featuring other vocalists over a filled-out arrangement with rhythm guitar and a harder kick and snare pattern, called the “Kette Drum” riddim, but when Buju wrapped his constantly modulating double-time around this slow, stripped-down version, most listeners had never heard anything like it.
At the time of ’Til Shiloh’s release, dancehall had been recognized as its own art form, something more than just a subset of reggae, for less than a decade. Buju, at the ripe old age of 22, was its undisputed king. He began deejaying seriously in the late ’80s, hanging around Kingston sound systems like Rambo Mango and Culture Love, waiting for a chance to hold the mic, then haunting studio gates, hoping to record. Although “The Ruler,” for producer Robert Ffrench, was the first Buju 45 pressed to vinyl, his 1991 breakout hit “Stamina Daddy,” for Winston Riley’s Techniques label, established his star persona: a lanky beanpole of a youth assuming the macho swagger of a bigger man, complete with a deep, gravelly voice that emulated his namesake, the older sound system star Burro Banton.
