By Claudia Gardner:
General Trees’ Gone a Negril, is the biggest Dancehall song to have been recorded about the resort town.
It was one of two mega hit songs about Negril in a three-year span, the other being Tyrone Taylor’s classic, Cottage in Negril which was recorded in 1983.
Gone a Negril, which was recorded in 1986, relives General Trees’ experiences on a joy-ride to the town famous for tourism, live Reggae, and one of the most spectacular beaches in the world.
But, for the Kingston native, whose given name is Amos Edwards, it was also the place which generated one of his largest and most enduring hit songs.
It spurred interest in Negril as a staycation destination, as many Jamaicans domiciled overseas and those from elsewhere on the island, made sojourns to Negril to enjoy the “niceness” that General Trees, who had gone there for a live stage performance, so happily sang about.
For Negrilier and operator of the One Love Bus Bar Crawl, Lenbert Williams, what Gone A Negril did to cement the resort town in the minds of Jamaicans as a staycation destination, is something that is priceless.
“For those who understood marketing, and the cost of marketing, that was like the best piece of marketing for the local audience that money could not have paid for. And so, on behalf of the entire Negril population, General Trees you probably old and grey now, but trust me, we are eternally grateful for the immense free word of mouth marketing and that is the greatest piece of word of mouth marketing,” Williams told Negril Times.
“I can tell you, the local community converged onto Negril because of that song… and that song was so beautifully flavoured, you know. It pushed the Orange Hill weed and trust mi, General Trees, you are the General. Negril people are grateful,” he added.
Williams said that the song not only resulted in a throngs of Jamaican nationals flocking to Negril from then on, but also citizens from other fellow Caribbean islands.
“The Caribbean too, because the Reggae music is bigger. Throughout the Caribbean than their native music, you know,” he explained.
In speaking of his reaction the first time he heard the song about his beloved Negril, Lenbert said it was a massively thrilling experience.
“I was filled with goose pimples, I felt like we are getting a piece of marketing. We were getting away with ‘murder’,” he said emphatically. “We should have paid General Trees millions of dollars for that immense piece of marketing tool.”
“He should have been awarded for it. That is a such a great piece of gift I believe in international tourism, but I also believe in local tourism and I believe that first to push a product and perfect the product, it should be perfected for our local domestic tourism. They can be very critical and demanding and discerning you know, and General Trees kinda open up Jamaican people’s eyes to Negril. It was like the national anthem for Negril of the day. We are very appreciative. He put the local Negril market on the map,” he said.
Gone a Negril peaked at number two on the local music charts in 1983, trumped only by Tiger’s Wanga Gut, the song’sproducer, Jack Scorpio said in a Gleaner interview several years ago.
The intro to the song sees woman approaching General Trees saying:
“A long time me love yuh enuh and me a beg yuh a visa fi guh a farin”.
As the bantering progresses, Trees asks if she has a passport:
“Suh how yuh a ask fi visa and yuh nuh have a passport?”
General Trees then gets into the first verse asking two question in his opening lines:
“You want to go to Negril?/Or even to MoBay?
Gonna take you go to Ochi or a St Ann’s Bay/An don’t feel no way …”
In a Gleaner article published in 2010, General Trees, in explaining how the songs came about, said that he and his team were on a three-night tour in rural Jamaica, and after performing at Club Cuckoo in Negril, the following morning they went to the beach to chill, and were told by a security guard that they “could not stay”.
“We mek him know Jamaica a our place, yu rada de other people dan we?” Trees recounted, revealing that when he declared to the security guard who he was, the man, perhaps star-struck, or realising that he was confronting a Dancehall heavyweight, changed his attitude towards the group, and yielded.
That encounter was penned into Gone a Negril in the line “him neva play it tough, him neva play it hard…” the story goes.
Jack Scorpio also told The Gleaner that General Trees, who turns 61 in December, had met a girl in Negril (from Orange Hill, according to the song) whom he fancied and that “the vibes was nice” and that while reminiscing on the enjoyable time that he had in the Capital of Casual, General Trees burst out: “I want to go to Negril”.
“That was key. As a producer, when you hear that sound,” Jack Scorpio had explained to The Sunday Gleaner.
According to The Gleaner article which was penned by Mel Cooke, the ‘sound’ was developed on Black Scorpio sound system, where General Trees “deejayed part of Gone a Negril live, then it was on to the studio”, where Scorpio engaged the Riddim Kings band to ‘lick’ the riddim at Channel One and the live sound was key to the distinctive three emphatic beats in the chorus”.
