Israelites (song)

The Israelites were the first worldwide reggae hit by Desmond Dekker & The Aces, who became the first million-seller of reggae in 1969.

Genesis

Desmond Dekker was not unknown in the UK, because he was able to bring 007 an average hit (# 14) in July 1967 in the charts. The idea for The Israelites came Dekker during a walk in a Jamaican Park when he heard a couple talking about money woes. The next morning he had completed the text. It is an ode about the concerns of the poor. The Israelites is a biblical metaphor about deprivation and redemption; you work like a trojan and suffers like an Israelite. In Jamaican slang is Israelites for suffering (poverty, hunger ).

The title refers to the sufferings of the Israelites, especially in the Babylonian exile and before the exodus from Egypt, but says the fate of black slaves in America or Jamaica. This topic is also widely used in the Rastafarian faith, but Desmond Dekker was not a Rasta. The narrator in the song text has been abandoned by his wife and children because he could not care for them. As he as Rude boy by petty crime stays alive, he is afraid to end up like Bonnie and Clyde, the famous gangster couple of the thirties, which was shot by the police.

The tempo of the song is 148 bpm in alla breve counting. The key is B flat major ( American Bb major). Harmonically the song is based on a simple major cadence. Unusually, however, is the use of non- diatonic chord D flat major at the end of each phrase ( ie in the turnaround ). This point is further accentuated by the role played by lead guitar and electric bass as a fast unison run -flat major scale upwards.

Success

Taken with the Aces ( Wilson James and Easton Barrington Howard) in Kingston / Jamaica in the small recording studio of the Chinese- Jamaican producer and fellow composer Leslie Kong under the original title Poor Me Israelite / ( My Precious World) The Man, he was in Jamaica in October 1968 first published on Kong's Beverley 's Records (BV # 21). There he became a hit in underground venues. In early 1969, the song by Pyramid Records was taken under license, renamed The Israelites and published as Pyramid 6058 in March 1969. After the pirate radio station Radio Caroline played the title often, he could quickly gaining in popularity despite the incomprehensible language in the UK. The Caribbean patois dialect made ​​it difficult to understand the content, but seemed to be a hindrance to sale. In Britain alone, the title was sold 250,000 times and reached on April 26, 1969 for a week topped the charts. A first place was occupied in the Netherlands, Germany, South Africa, Canada, Sweden and Jamaica. In the U.S., the timeless lament over the Caribbean poverty penetrated up to ninth in the charts. Overall, by the end of 1969 two million copies were sold worldwide. The Israelites became the first purely Jamaican production, was able to achieve the gold status.

The year 1969 was very favorable for the spread of Reggae in the Western world, because Harry J. All Stars with The Liquidator and the Upsetters Return of Django with (both October 1969 ) reached the Top 5 on the British charts. The time trend-setting Beatles supported very early reggae movement with Ob- La - Di, Ob -La -Da as a tribute to this style of music, which became, published in the December 1968 cover version of The Marmalade to the British top hit.