“A lot of people say to me, ‘Bwoy, Cocoa Tea, you should have been bigger,’ I don’t worry about that… After humility come the glory.”
There’s an old song that says, “Music alone shall live.” Lovers of reggae music received an unwelcome reminder of this fact early Tuesday morning when the beloved Jamaican vocalist Calvin “Cocoa Tea” Scott passed away at the age of 65 after battling cancer for the last few years. It’s no exaggeration to say that the irrepressibly energetic reggae legend—whose recordings and stage performances proudly represented the Rasta roots tradition—will be remembered as one of the sweetest singers of any culture, creed, or genre ever to touch the microphone. His transition from the earthly dimension was greeted with an outpouring of grief from fans worldwide as well as heartffelt tributes from musical peers like Bounty Killer and Beres Hammond. “My uncle, as sad as the situation is,” Spragga Benz shared in an Instagram post, “I am happy you are in no more suffering and pain. Over the years Boomshots has blessed to connect with Cocoa Tea on numerous occasions. Even amidst feelings of loss and grief, the memories came flooding today. Videos and Interviews After the Jump…
In 2013 we witnessed Cocoa Tea delivering an unforgettable performance before a capacity crowd at the Brixton Academy. Although the audience was ecstatic as he ran through classics like “Israel’s King,” “One Drop,” “18 and Over,” “Holy Mount Zion,” “Good Life” and “Love Me”—the singer did not hesitate to chastise the sound system operator for falling short of his high standards. “Regular ting Cocoa duh anyweh,” one longtime friend observed with a smile reviewing the video today. “Don’t ramp with him. Musicians get handled too. He will chop dem dung on the spot—in melody!”
The following year, Reshma B caught up with Cocoa after his set at Best of the Best at Miami’s Bayfront Park. “Without the roots there’s no fruits,” the veteran singer observed. “When you’re having a show like this you have to have a mixture of experience and young talent because experience teaches wisdom, so the younger generation can learn how to do it like how we do it.” After expressing his respect for Buju, he treated Reshma to a special rendition of “Like Never Before,” his dreamy collaboration with Shaggy and the R&B star Joe, then wrapped up with an acapella version of his latest self-produced tune “Sunset in Negril.”
Having proven his skills on a local sound system, Cocoa Tea recorded his first song, “Searching in the Hills,” at the age of 14. After trying his hand as a racehorse jockey and a fisherman, he devoted himself to miusic for the better part of a half century, creating countless classic selections like “Tune In,” “Lost My Sonia,” and “Rikers Island” along the way as well as a seemingly infinite number of sound system dubplates. Back in 2004 Rob Kenner had the chance to speak with Cocoa for an extended interview that first appeared in his VIBE magazine column “Boomshots.”
“Fishermen are stubborn,” says Cocoa Tea, the veteran reggae singer who was born and raised in the little fishing village of Rocky Point on Jamaica’s southern shore. “When the weatherman says the waves will be six feet and the breeze will be all 20 knots, that’s the time we want to go to sea,” he adds with a laugh. “That’s when you catch the most fish. So we say let’s go because that is young man weather.”
Young Calvin Scott always knew he had a gift for making melodies, but after traveling to Kingston to record his first song in 1974, he began to doubt whether he was cut out for the music business. “I went to the track and tried to be a jockey,” he recalls. “And I went to sea and start to learn to fish.”
To fish for a living is to deal with life and death every day—and not just because the fish must surrender their lives to become somebody’s dinner. The boats set off each morning; sometimes they returned heavy with fish and sometimes they never came back at all. “When you out there you see some terrible wave,” he says. “You haffi bawl Whoooah sea! You haffi talk to the wave and beg him not to kill you. And sometimes the boat full right down with water. You haffi take something and bail out, bail out, bail out before you drown. When you are fishing you’re playing with the sea, and the sea’s a very terrible man. When him start to rage you can’t stop him.”
Cocoa Tea’s fishing career was interrupted by the classic 1984 album Can’t Stop Cocoa Tea produced by the late great Junjo Laws. The next year, he voiced the timeless “Tune In” for King Jammy and began blazing a trail of hits like “Rikers Island” and “Good Life” and combinations with Shabba Ranks like “Who She Love” and “Pirates Anthem.” The sweetness continues on his latest album, Tek Whey Yuh Gal (King of Kings), produced at his own Roaring Lion studio in his home parish of Clarendon.
While he was touring the U.S. in support of his album, Hurricane Ivan’s eye passed within 50 miles of Jamaica’s southern coast. “A lot of my people lost a lot of things,” he said. “There’s a place called Pedro Key where people go to fish, and I heard about 30 people drowned in the storm there. They were supposed to evacuate but they say they don’t want to leave the key. So all who nah leave the key drown. But, you know, it’s the work of the Almighty. Because everything you have in life you can lose it inna one second. You just haffi live life and hope for the best and do what we can do to help people to recover and to recuperate. Because it can happen to us too same way.”
“A lot of people say to me, Bwoy Cocoa Tea, you should have been bigger,” he admitted after a recent performance in New York. “I don’t worry about that. When you can be satisfied with what you have, it’s a great thing in life. Then you can give to others. But if you never satisfied, that mean you ah go always need more. So I just live simple same way. After humility comes the glory.” Fishermen are like that.
HEAR THIS: Cocoa Tea Boomshots
“I never write a song yet with a pen and pencil,” Cocoa Tea said. “And I’ve written so many songs. Anytime you try to take a pen to write a song it kinda kill the vibes.“
Cocoa Tea shared so many gems with me that I couldn’t fit them all in the magazine. “Even Bob Marley and dem man deh,ah so dem usually make tune yunno.” He sang a few lines of the Marley classic “Sun is Shining, weather is sweet” and then stated that it was an “on the spot lyrics,” as he described it. “A lot of people cannot make a song cause they are not melody makers,” added the prolific tunesmith. “The melody rotates and the vibes reach you.”
“This music is coming from such a far distance,” Cocoa Tea told me. “So we are from the early school when it was John Holt and Gregory Isaacs and Sugar Minott and Dennis Brown. You know Bob Marley are the great one. Nobody can exceed Bob Marley.”
“To me, the people love roots rock reggae more. But the younger generation just knows about dancehall. When they get to understand roots rock reggae, they love roots rock reggae more. We sing and let you hear the message and listen to the melody. What is being promoted by the big companies is dancehall, which is quick moneymaking.”
“We love the dancehall but the roots is still what the people calls for. Sean Paul sell platinum or Shaggy sell platinum, but six months after the people want something new. Still people sing “Good Life” and “Tune In” for year after year. People will always want to hear song like that.”
When I pointed out that he had recorded some massive tunes with Shabba over the years—timeless tunes like “Love Me Truly” and “Pirates Anthem“—he paid full respect to the Rans. “No disrespect to no other DJ but Shabba Rankin is one wicked DJ. Him name Shabba Rankin!” Nevertheless, Cocoa Tea stood firm in his defense of classical roots reggae.
“No matter wha gwan the music have to come back to the roots. When all is said and done, the music is a music of unity. The music is a music weh designed to unite people. The music is not a music weh designed to divide people. So we have to get we act together. We no want it to look like the music that divide the people and send the people in a wrong direction. Start promoting some positive things for the people to hear. If Elephant Man say him ago kill this and Beenie Man ah say him ah go kill that. And the next one ah say him ah go kill dat. And this man say him a bad man and that man say him a badman, we leading the people down a road of destruction. “
“Wherever there is only war nobody win. Is humanity we are destroying when we fight a war. Whether you are a terrorist or you are whatever you say you are. You just fighting a losing battle. Ah no dem ting deh Bob Marley take and make reggae music big inna the whole world. Bob Marley take words of wisdom, words of inspiration, words of unity, words of equal rights and justice to unite the world.”
Photographs by Robert Cooper
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