Tony Rebel remembers Garnet Silk...20 Days of Silk, "Dem time dey wi a search......wi read the Bible, reason every day," Rebel recalled.

 BY HOWARD CAMPBELL Observer writer  Friday, November 21, 2014    
This is the third in the Jamaica Observer's daily 20-part series, 20 Days of Silk, which looks at the life of roots singer Garnet Silk. Next month marks 20 years since his death.
Tony Rebel and Garnet Silk
THE Jamaican dancehall was mired in lewd and violent lyrics throughout the 1980s. That carried over into the 1990s until a group of Rastafarian artistes from south-central parishes brought their message of consciousness to a music that had lost its way.
Heading the group was dub poet Yasus Afari, deejay Tony Rebel and singer Garnet Silk. Singers Everton Blender and Uton Green, and deejay Kulcha Knox were also part of the crew.
Rebel, Silk and Blender enjoyed the most mainstream success. Silk and Rebel were from Manchester and knew each other since the early 1980s when they performed on sound systems in that parish.
Rebel told Splash that they quickly developed a bond -- one that grew after both discovered Rastafari.
"Dem time dey wi a search...wi read the Bible, reason every day," Rebel recalled....
After moving to Kingston in 1987, Rebel says Silk followed. They lived in the same house while trying to get a break in the music businesss, working stage shows and hanging out at recording studios.
Both entered the charts around 1992. Once they did, they never left for the next two years, often recording for the same producers, including Donovan Germain and Bobby 'Bobby Digital' Dixon.
In fact, Germain produced Gave You Everything I've Got, one of Silk's biggest hits which was written by Rebel. The deejay also wrote another Silk hit, Love is Divine, produced by Digital. more

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