After decades of creating and performing music drawn from an eclectic mix of influences and unique collaborations, South Bristol native Kate Schrock has returned to the basics for her latest album, “Kor.”
Shrock will showcase her latest album when she takes the stage of Lincoln Theater in Damariscotta Friday, Sept. 25.
“Kor” is a scaled-down version of music Schrock has performed throughout her 20-year career. It is a solo acoustic album that celebrates the tools Schrock built her career with – her piano and her voice.
Schrock will be joined on stage Friday by saxophonist Glen DaCosta, a legend in the reggae world and collaborator on Schrock’s previous album, “Invocation.”
Those who have heard Bob Marley and the Wailers’ albums “Catch a Fire”, “Kaya”, “Confrontation”, “Natty Dread”, “Legend”, or “Exodus” have heard DaCosta’s playing. His horn work helped shape the major cannon of Bob Marley and the Wailers’ music – music that solidified Marley as a cultural icon and made “one love” a catch phrase spoken around the world.
DaCosta will return to his native Jamaica Sept. 26 to embark on his own quest to return to the basics. He plans to reunite with fellow founding members of Zap Pow, a reggae band whose songs were once censored by Jamaica’s political establishment, and create, “real reggae music,” he said.
For DaCosta, real reggae music is spiritual – it creates positive vibrations, awakens global consciousness, and tears down the unjust political and social systems that oppress the masses.
Schrock was raised in South Bristol. The Lincoln Academy graduate learned to play piano in a back room of her parents’ house on an instrument bought for $5 and tucked away with fishing gear. At five-years old, Schrock would tuck herself away in that room too and teach herself how to turn piano keys into music.
Schrock’s family migrated out of South Bristol in the 1980s and for the remainder of her youth, Schrock, “clandestinely wrote music,” she said.
While studying at the University of Chicago, Schrock began to play with Sin Embargo, a 5-piece band from South Chicago that was compared to the Velvet Underground and voted one of the top new bands in 1987, she said.
It was the launch of Schrock’s professional career as a musician. “I got the bug,” Schrock said. After the band dissolved, Schrock’s career continued as an early pioneer in the do-it-yourself music industry. “I used to burn tapes and sell them off stage for $5,” Schrock said.
After the release of her first two albums, Schrock landed a record deal with Famous Music Publishing and toured in support of former Rolling Stones guitarist Mick Taylor, the BoDeans, and Stephen Stills, among others.
It was a “nano-second” before Schrock was back to producing and performing music as an independent musician on her own music label, Kakelane.
Shrock first crossed paths with DaCosta in Kentucky during the final show of a tour promoting her 2003 album “Indiana.” DaCosta was on tour at the time with The Wailers, an amalgamation of musicians centered around Bob Marley and the Wailers’ bassist Aston “Family Man” Barrett – a band DaCosta said should rename itself, “Family Man and the Strangers.”
“No one person can say they are the Wailers,” DaCosta said. “It was all of us.”
DaCosta stopped into a club to see Schrock perform and was taken by her creativity and originality, he said, which had none of the commercial influences DaCosta saw destroying the music around him.
“Thirteen years later we’re still continuing the conversation,” DaCosta said.
DaCosta was raised in an orphanage in Jamaica. “It was rough,” DaCosta said, “but music was always on my mind.” In the 1950s and 1960s in Jamaica, American and European music filled the airways. From rhythm and blues to country to opera, there was no musical genre DaCosta did not lose himself in, he said.
As a student at the Alpha Boys’ School, a vocational school in Kingston, run by the Sisters of Mercy, DaCosta used to neglect his other duties and hide in a tree where the school’s band would congregate to practice. The bandmaster found him in the tree one day, he said.
DaCosta told the bandmaster he wanted to play saxophone with the band. The bandmaster said he had no need for a saxophone player, but if DaCosta could learn to play the clarinet he could join the band. It took DaCosta 30 minutes to learn, he said.
DaCosta would go on to learn how to play not only the saxophone but all of the instruments in the woodwind family. From 1961 to 1971, DaCosta enlisted in the army and played with the army band. He was constantly in trouble, however, for leaving base to see the performances of Jamaica’s up and coming ska musicians.
In 1969, DaCosta formed Zap Pow with Dwight Pinkney, Max Edwards, Mike Williams, Joe McCormack, Vincent Gordon, and David Madden. Zap Pow was at the forefront of the emergence of reggae music with its intensely political messaging that lashed out at Jamaica’s post-colonial power structure while simultaneously making people rock to its beats.
When Marley was handpicking musicians to record his albums with, he chose members of Zap Pow’s horn section. DaCosta, Madden, and Gordon worked with Marley throughout the 1970s.
As Bob Marley and the Wailers gained prominence on the world stage, Jamaica was in the midst of a political war between two political parties established while Jamaica was under England’s colonial rule.
“We were supposed to have a democracy,” DaCosta said, “but we never did.”
Jamaica achieved independence in 1962, but descended into a bloody struggle between supporters of the two factions throughout the 1970s.
“The music was the voice of the people,” DaCosta said. “It’s why Bob Marley was so famous. He spoke for the voiceless. No one would listen to them, but they would listen to Bob Marley.”
Marley rarely brought his horn section on his international tours, but DaCosta was there for nearly every step of Marley’s rise to prominence. For DaCosta, when Marley died in 1981, the music went with him.
“He was never caught up in the stardom,” DaCosta said. “He never thought of himself that way. Bob saw himself as a humble servant of the people. He was doing what he needed to do to affect positive change.”
Despite Bob Marley’s legacy, little has changed in Jamaica. The two dominant parties continue to vie for political control, Jamaica continues to rank on the human development index’s list of countries with alarming poverty rates, and the country’s national debt continues to skyrocket.
IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde gave a speech in Jamaica in support of a recent IMF loan and said the economic outlook of the country was improving. “She must think we’re stupid,” DaCosta said.
Corruption and poverty continue to destroy Jamaica, DaCosta said. “It’s still like it was in the days of slavery.”
Since Marley’s passing, DaCosta has toured with The Wailers, engaged in collaborations with a variety of international musicians, and worked as a solo artist. In 2007, Schrock and DaCosta worked together to create “Invocation,” Schrock’s sixth release on her record label.
While Schrock’s performance in Damariscotta on Friday will highlight work from her recently released solo album “Kor”, the duo will perform songs from their collaboration.
Schrock did not incorporate reggae into her music until meeting DaCosta, she said. However, it was music that she connected with due to its heavy gospel and jazz elements, she said.
For DaCosta, the reggae music that at one time threatened to overturn Jamaica’s political establishment has itself become corrupted by the greed and selfishness of the music industry. It is something he hopes to change when he returns to Jamaica to reunite with David Madden and Dwight Pickney to resurrect Zap Pow.
“Sharing consciousness, giving voice to the voiceless and disenfranchised, peace, love, harmony, truth, and justice, that’s the true purpose of reggae music,” DaCosta said. “That’s my main objective.”
DaCosta and Schrock will perform at Lincoln Theater in Damariscotta Friday, Sept. 25 at 7:30 p.m. following Bristol singer-songwriter Heather Hardy who will open the show. For more information on Kate Schrock visit www.kateschrock.com. Zap Pow has started a Kickstarter campaign to fund their new album. For more information visit www.kickstarter.com/projects/zappow/reggae-pioneers-zap-pow-to-record-a-new-album-this.