Sleng Teng: How a Japanese woman influenced Jamaica's reggae
ABC News
A musical revolution in Jamaica has a connection with a rhythm pattern that came off a portable electronic keyboard that’s the brainchild of a Japanese woman
TOKYO -- A musical revolution in Jamaica has a connection with a bouncy rhythm from a portable electronic keyboard that’s the brainchild of a Japanese woman.
The pattern that resonates in the 1985 reggae hit by Wayne Smith, “Under Mi Sleng Teng," came from Casiotone MT-40, which went on sale in 1981, the first product Hiroko Okuda worked on after joining the Tokyo-based company behind G-Shock watches.
“It’s really like my first child, and the child turned out so well it’s outright moving,” said Okuda, honored as “the mother of Sleng Teng” among the hard-core reggae aficionados.
Sleng Teng is a form of digital Jamaican music that began in the mid-1980s, part of the rich repertoire of the disco-like genre called “dancehall.” No one contests the key role played by artists like Smith and King Jammy, as well as the humble, battery-operated, $150 MT-40.
