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Allan “Skill” Cole’s role in transforming radio playlists in Jamaica was recalled by Kay Osbourne, his friend of over 60 years and former general manager at Television Jamaica, during the thanksgiving service for his life at the National Arena on Saturday, October 11.
Unlike today, Rasta and reggae were forbidden on Jamaican airwaves in the early 1970s. It took some muscle from Cole to get the music of The Wailers on radio stations like Radio Jamaica.
She said Cole, raised in a middle-class home, defied societal norms.
“It is in this Jamaica that radio stations outright refused to play music created by Rastafari. They shut the airwaves to the message that Rasta brought; no radio station would play a tune that glorify natty dread or venerate kaya,” she noted. “But as The Wailers manager, and immersed in Wailers music, Skill knew he had to attack the system, knowing that The Wailers’ messages were vital to and the sound was essential to the upliftment of the entire world.”
The aggressive methods by Cole against disc jockeys coincided with the roots-reggae explosion of the 1970s. While Radio Jamaica remained largely conservative, the rival Jamaica Broadcasting Corporation was more receptive to Marley and his contemporaries who included Peter Tosh and Bunny Wailer, his former colleagues in The Wailers, Burning Spear and The Wailing Souls.
A prodigy, Cole played for Jamaica at age 15, but had strong ties to music. At last Saturday’s service, there were tribute performances from the Binghistra Movement, Denzil “Dipstick” Williams, Leroy Sibbles, Bongo Herman, Dean Fraser, Tarrus Riley, Luciano, Beenie Man, Junior Reid, and Stephen Marley, son of Bob Marley.
The mercurial Cole epitomised the growing social awareness that gripped Jamaica in the 1960s and 1970s. Like Marley, he embraced Rastafari through the teachings of Mortimo Planno, a leader of that movement who lived in Trench Town.
Cole was Marley’s manager on his final tour, which was of the United States, in 1980.
Marley died from cancer in May 1981 in Miami at age 36.
Some of the music industry figures who attended the thanksgiving service were I Three members Marcia Griffiths and Judy Mowatt, mother of three of Cole’s six children; Entertainment and Culture Minister Olivia Grange; Opposition People’s National Party President Mark Golding; veteran tour manager Copeland Forbes; Mutabaruka; Tommy Cowan; Cindy Breakespeare; musicians Robbie Lyn, Stephen Stewart, and Noel Davy; singers Maxi Priest, Desi Young, Sampalue, and Ras Michael Jr; Michael “Mikey Dan” Whyte (Bob Marley’s former cook); consultant Clyde McKenzie; and music producers Mikey Bennett and Trevor “Leggo” Douglas.
— Howard Campbell
