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Collie Buddz
ABOUT COLLIE BUDDZ
Born in New Orleans, raised on the isle of Bermuda with intermittent stays in
urban Toronto, Colin Harper is not an easy youth to pin down geographically. His
musical alter ego Collie Buddz however, is one of the most firmly grounded
voices you may ever encounter. Incorporating influences from hip-hop to soca,
Collie’s music nevertheless has a rock-solid foundation in reggae - and its
power to connect ghetto reality with the highest heights of human aspiration -
that is a rarity even in Jamaica.
Born in 1981, at the dawn of the turbulent era signaled by the twin omens of
Bob Marley’s passing and Ronald Reagan’s
election, Collie was immersed in the sound system culture of Bermuda aka “The
Rock” since the age of 6. “I used to come home from primary school and my
brother would always be on the turntables, playin his new 45's an' I'd just be
there vibesin'.” The evolution of dancehall and sound-clash culture into a
movement of it’s own in the late 80s and early 90s set the backdrop for young
Collie’s discovery of his ow sonic identity, and the dancehall kings of that
generation - Buju Banton, Bounty Killer and Beenie Man served as his primary
influences. “Back when Beenie and Bounty used to war lyrically, seeing clashes
wit’ Kilimanjaro an all the sound-man an’ everyt’ing…the whole music scene for
me took on a new meaning. Clash thing an’ lyrical war became a part of my daily
life from early out.”
The daily operation of trading lyrics in schoolyard clashes quickly gave way to
more serious combat as “…people startin sayin ‘Ay, Buddz got some lyrics!’ From
an early age, some of the local sounds on the island wanted to get me on
dubplate,” says Collie, who stepped into the first of many vocal booths at age
16 to voice customized dubs for some Bermudian sounds. "Sounds was always trying
to buss local artists in Bermuda.” Consistent encouragement from the various
soundmen and engineers he encountered on those dub excursions led Collie to
maintain a musical focus and eventually trek to Florida for a degree in audio
engineering, a path that ended behind the boards of his own Bermudian studio,
jointly run with his older brother (Smokey) and Sneek Success from one of
Bermuda's founding sounds, 'Newclear Weapon'. Building riddims for other artists
only expanded his love for writing and voicing his own lyrics however. “I used
to make these beats an’ none of the tunes came out how I pictured an artist
sittin’ on de riddim, so I decided to start to get in the booth myself again and
spit some lyrics. Unless my brother engineerin’ for me, I’m runnin from the
board to the booth, back to the board!” Like boot camp for a one-man army, that
experience molded the signature vocal style that defines Collie Buddz - a
songwriter who can lay his own riddim, sing the hook and chat on the verse. “I
build de riddim first and while I’m building it I don’t try an’ think about
lyrics ‘cause I'm tryin' to focus on the riddim, yunno? I make it sound as best
I can and then for a day or two I rest my ears then start de writing process. I
come up wif a melody firs’ and get that down, then start with the lyrics.” The
skill with which he compartmentalizes multiple roles in the studio also extends
to his easy movement between styles.
A falsetto that combines the singsong lover’s rock appeal of a carnival crooner
like Rupee with the deeper emotional catch of Bob Marley or Sizzla, Collie’s
voice sits with equal comfort over the jump-up pace of ragga-soca, 4/4 hip-hop
beats or an achingly slow one drop. Most strikingly on tunes like “My
Everything” he finds both the drive of dancehall and the bluesy edge of roots in
a frenetic polyrhythm built around the Latin horns of David Bowie’s “Let’s
Dance,” an up-tempo track that could be just as home in a Trinidad carnival as a
UK discothèque. “Some tunes I create are just to show that I could do anything I
put my mind to,” he explains “to show the versatility of my style.” For many
artists such versatility can be a curse and only a select few can maintain a
distinctive voice when so many styles come so easy. But on tracks like “Moving
On,” the layers of competing influences seem less like contradictions and more
like necessary stages in the development of a larger persona, something like the
succession of roles from pimp, to preacher, to something like a revolutionary
that formed Malcolm X. Instead of pulling the song apart, the warring elements
are all somehow essential to a larger vision reflected in his lyrics: “Feel like
me cyan move an’ trap in a cage / still searchin’ for the words to put ‘pon the
page…” It’s that discovery of timeless roots even within the sweatiest dancehall
track that marks the culmination of Collie’s growth.
“Nowadays when I go to put on a CD, its old
tune: Alton Ellis, The Meditations, The Heptones, Skattalites, Jacob Miller,
Eric Monty Morris; love the rockers music. From that I start to teach myself
some of the history of this music, that’s where I started to come a little more
versatile with the singin’…the foundation just straight reality, yunno. I like
dancehall, but de foundation and concious tune really what me love.”
"Finally the herbs come around!" Collie Buddz
speaks on the herb drought during Bermuda's winter season in his radio hit"COME AROUND".
