All Nation Have To Bow

Ranking Devon

The Shank I Sheck rhythm, from which this piece of militant early Eighties toasting launches itself, goes way back to the ska era. Baba Brooks and his orchestra cut the original Shank I Sheck on the King Edwards label back in the mid Sixties and a fine sample of uptempo ska it is. A top rhythm never dies in Jamaica and there have been countless versions of this one over the years that followed. But for me this is the standout.

Ranking Devon did not make a lot of records and no others that reached the class of this one but All Nation Have To Bow is enough to secure his place in reggae history. His dee jay delivery is fast and ferocious over a rhythm that's infinitely slower and heavier than the Baba Brooks original. Play the two back to back to fully experience how exuberant ska could be and how exhausting it must have been for the dancers! The menacing rhythm, the echoed horns, the amplified drum crashes, put All Nation Have To Bow right at the centre of the heavy Channel One and Volcano production style that was at its peak when this record was made.

There's something war-weary and apocalyptic about this record, coming as it did after years of political violence in Jamaica, with Ranking Devon singing "them killing off the man and them killing off the woman". But there's also a whole people's will and determination to survive in lines like "when judgement come, the wicked haffi run, some of them melt like butter gainst sun" and you're left with that sense of heart and power which reggae music, at its best, has always given.

Selected by Rae Town