Mel Cooke, Gleaner Writer

IN THE last few years of his life, it seemed to all happen to and for Garnet Silk. He had the hits and the stand-out concert appearances; then there was the hiatus from music, the return and the shocking (and for many still mysterious) death.

All in the space of about 36 months leading up to December 10, 1994.

Although Silk charted with Christ In His Kingly Character, Zion In a Vision and Lionheart, among his other very popular songs, there is a special rub-a-dub tune that came in 1994 as Silk ended his withdrawal from public life. It is Splashing Dashing, fusion of biblical and outright poetic verse, the Lord's prayer leading into a lyrical observation of turbulent waters, which the dancehall massive could figuratively see as they danced away.

Poem transformed

And it was a very danceable song, Silk's voice couched on the immortal Death in Arena rhythm (Tony Rebel exhorted "careful what you teach the little children" in that era's revival of the rhythm), the bassline rolling without additives for the first verse and the drums easing in on the transformed poem of a chorus:

"Splashing dashing restless sea

Never still you seem to be

Sometimes angry sometimes sad."

The voice is Silk's, but the direction was in many ways Owen 'Matalon' MacDonald's, who was one of those close to the man who once deejayed as Bimbo in the time he retreated into himself.

"I first met Garnet in Mandeville. He was then a deejay, Bimbo," Matalon told The Sunday Gleaner. "Meeting him, we weren't so close then, but through Bridgette (Anderson, Silk's manager), the closeness came along."

While Silk wasn't much in the public eye, along with a few friends, including Matalon, he made many trips from Kingston to St Thomas, where "we were up and down, to Bath Fountain for therapy, the beach and the river".

Famous

And Splashing Dashing started at a waterfall in Roselle, St Thomas, famous at one point for being in the then Jamaica Broad-casting Corpora-tions' sign-off montage, and ended (as far as the creative process is concerned) at a studio in Barbican, St Andrew. Matalon said, "one day we were at the waterfall by Roselle. Silk wanted to go into the sea to swim. I said it was dirty. By saying that, I said to him that 'Splashing Dashing' was my favourite poem".

"We got into the car, I started telling him more about the poem and he started singing the song. We did it all the way from the beach to Bath Fountain."

When they reached the famed hot springs, the lyrics were complete, Still, in another watery setting, "he was singing it, singing it and he said 'I want it to be written out'". So, on the way back to Kingston they stopped by Matalon's house in Yallahs and "I called my daughter to write it on a book leaf. We went on to Kingston and he got a rhythm and completed it that same night".

"We finished about 11:00 o'clock to 11:30 p.m., he went up and I drove back to Yallahs," Matalon said.

The next time he heard Splashing Dashing was on the radio some two to three weeks later. Among the early performances where that song was included was one in Bottom Spring, Ocho Rios.

Not long after, Garnet Silk was dead, the official cause being a shotgun blast in a cooking gas cylinder.

Matalon, of course, has many musical memories of Garnet Silk, ready to play, but he remembers one occasion off the stage where the 'kingly' character came through.

"The first time he was called King Garnet, he came to my home and my son said, 'You know you are King Garnet'. And him hum and said, 'Is a child crown me'," Matalon said.

Water runs through Jamaican music

Jamaica is the 'Land of Wood and Water' and the forced transatlantic journey of Africans to the 'New World' looms large in the Rastafarian belief system, from which many outstanding entertainers come.

It is no surprise, then, that water has been liberally sprinkled throughout Jamaican music. Among the many liquid lyrics and sound effects are: