Studio 17: The Lost Reggae Tapes, Makes Its Global Premiere Today
The Reggae Documentary titled Studio 17: The Lost Reggae Tapes, makes its global premiere today, to mark the beginning of Reggae Month.
The tapes, which date back to more than four decades ago, were produced by Vincent ‘Randy’ Chin and were rescued by his son, legendary music producer Clive Chin, who digitized and re-mastered them. Vincent Chin and his wife Pat, were the founders of international Reggae label, VP Records, which played a critical role in propelling Reggae music’s global reach.
At the core of the film itself, are the tapes salvaged from a vault by Clive at Studio 17, also known as “Randy’s”, the business establishment which had been abandoned when the Chin family fled to America due to political upheaval in Jamaica in the late 1970s. It also follows Clive’s own battle to secure the rights to the Randy’s archive “so that the music will be heard by future generations”.
Located in the heart of downtown Kingston at 17 North Parade, Studio 17 was a nucleus of Kingston’s vibrant music scene in the 1970s. Decades after his family fled Jamaica for New York, abandoning the recording studio and hundreds of session tapes in their haste, Clive returned to the old business place to salvage hundreds of reels that were left behind, painstakingly restoring the lost recordings by many legends of ska and reggae, which had been produced by his father and himself.
The story is also told of Clive’s emotional struggles to overcome the murder of his son Joel, in whose honour the film is dedicated. At the time of his killing in Stony Hill, St. Andrew in August 2011, the 35-year-old producer headed VP’s Artiste and Repertoire department.
“This will be available on Quincy Jones Qwest TV and for a limited time on Tidal. I produced Studio 17 with the BBC and it was very popular on British TV and got some really great reviews but has never been seen outside of England. We were just starting the film festival circuit at the top of 2020 but had to cut our schedule short due to the pandemic. Feb 1st will be the film’s global premiere,” producer Reshma B Rgat explained.
According to her, the film opens a door into the creation of a musical form which changed the sound of popular music around the world and “also takes a hard look at the real lives of the poor musicians who created it”.
The film, Reshma B says, features many classic reggae songs recorded by icons such as The Wailers, Peter Tosh and Gregory Isaacs as well as original interviews with legends including I Am a Mad Man singer Lee Scratch Perry, Sly Dunbar, Maxi Priest, Ali Campbell of UB40, King Jammy, Lord Creator, Ernest Ranglin, the late producer Bunny Lee and Jimmy Cliff.
There is also a never before heard Dennis Brown track which was rescued from the Randy’s archives and can be heard for the first time in the documentary. The song was produced by in the mid-1970s at Studio 17 and left unfinished and unreleased until being rescued by Clive many years later.
“The film tells the story of the birth of reggae as it rose from humble beginnings to become a worldwide phenomenon. The in-depth documentary tells the story of how Lord Creator fell on hard times after recording early hits for Randy’s and other producers. Years later he was homeless and destitute until the British reggae band UB40 covered one of his classic songs and changed his life forever,” Reshma said in a release.
“The Randy’s archive contains hundreds of reels featuring many unheard and unreleased songs by The Wailers, Peter Tosh, Dennis Brown, The Skatalites, Alton Ellis, Gregory Isaacs and many more legendary stars of Jamaican music. Somehow these precious tapes survived years of neglect as well as looting, hurricane Gilbert, and intense tropical heat,” the release added.