ENTITY · PERSON (ARTIST, SELECTOR, PRODUCER…)
Count Lasher
Well supported
One of the mento singers who recorded through the 1950s, in the wave of Jamaican records made just before ska. His songs work the way mento does — topical, funny and pointed about hard circumstances — and belong to the period when Jamaica was recording its own music commercially for the first time.
At a glance
- Confidence
- Well supported
- Sources
- Michael Garnice, The Ultimate Guide to Great Reggae, on the golden age of mento singles and on "Natta Bay Road"; Peter Manuel, Caribbean Currents, which lists him among the 1950s mento singers who went on composing after ska; Odimumba Kwamdela, Mighty Sparrow, Calypso King of the World, for the contemporary Trinidadian view of Jamaican calypso.
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Debate & reception
What people argued about this record — two documented positions each time, kept apart from verified fact. Browse every argument in the archive →
Mento or calypso? A question of Jamaican identity
One side
Mento's distinct Jamaican identity
The other
Marketing it as Trinidadian calypso
A documented naming debate: mento was frequently marketed and referred to as 'calypso,' conflating it with the Trinidadian form; some framed this as harmless commercial shorthand, others as an erasure of mento's distinct Jamaican identity. Neutral framing; no verdict.
Read the argument →Mento's bawdy songs: rustic candour or colonial indecency?
One side
Rural working-class humour and candour
The other
Middle-class colonial indecency
Two documented positions on mento's sexual double-entendre, stated neutrally: defenders heard rural working-class humour and honest candour in the word-play, while respectable and colonial opinion condemned it as 'smutty' and low. Neutral framing; no verdict.
Read the argument →Share this record
Compiled and researched by The Jamaica Music Atlas music desk. The sources that informed it are credited above.
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