The Congos

A Jamaican vocal group whose falsetto, tenor and baritone harmonies, recorded by Lee "Scratch" Perry at the Black Ark, made Heart of the Congos, a lost 1977 album now counted among the great roots reggae records.

Origin
Jamaica
Years active
1970s-present
Genres
roots reggae
Labels
Black Art, Congo Ashanty, CBS, Epic, Go-Feet, Blood and Fire, VP, RVNG Intl
Also known as
The Congoes, Congo

Before the Congos

Cedric Myton, born in 1947 in Old Harbour, Jamaica, sings falsetto. His first group, the Bell Stars, cut one single, Over and Over, in 1967. The next year he formed the Tartans with Lincoln Thompson, Preps Lewis and Devon Russell, who had a hit in 1969 with Dance All Night, and in those years he first met Lee "Scratch" Perry at Studio One. He also sang in Ras Michael's group, and in the mid-1970s with Prince Lincoln Thompson's Royal Rasses, co-writing their album Humanity.

With the tenor Roydel "Ashanti Roy" Johnson, also born in 1947, in Hanover, Myton founded the Congos. The duo's first record for Perry was a single, At the Feast.

The Black Ark

In 1976 the two came to Perry's Black Ark studio in Kingston to record, and Perry asked Derrick "Watty" Burnett, a baritone who had worked with him since 1968 and also drummed and played bass on Black Ark sessions, to sing a third voice. Heart of the Congos was made there across 1976 and 1977, with Boris Gardiner, Sly Dunbar and Ernest Ranglin in the band and the Meditations, Gregory Isaacs and two of the Heptones among the backing singers. Burnett made the mooing cow sounds Perry threaded through the record, using aluminium foil, and sang on seven tracks, but he is missing from the sleeve photograph because he was in Grand Cayman. The album opens with Fisherman.

Perry was in dispute with Island Records when it was finished, so it came out late in 1977 on his own Black Art label, in a pressing reportedly of a few hundred copies, and Island issued only a 12-inch of Congoman. The row over the release strained the group's relationship with Perry, and they left him. In 1978 they put the album out themselves on their Congo Ashanty label, in a new and different mix that every reissue followed until 2017.

Without Perry

CBS and Epic released Congo Ashanti and Image of Africa in 1979, some copies credited simply to Congo, and Face the Music followed on Ariola in 1981. Heart of the Congos reached Europe in 1980, in France and on Go-Feet, the label of the Beat, in Britain. Then Burnett quit, Johnson left to go solo, and Myton kept the name alive until about the mid-1980s.

Back in Jamaica, Myton re-formed the group in the mid-1990s with Burnett and Lindburgh Lewis. In 1996 Blood and Fire, the Manchester label co-founded by Steve Barrow, reissued Heart of the Congos from the Black Ark quarter-inch masters with a disc of rarities, and says it sold about 80,000 copies in ten years. It is now held as one of Perry's masterpieces: Pitchfork ranked it 46th among the albums of the 1970s, and Barrow and Dalton called it the most completely successful of all the Black Ark albums. Myton said he had not realised the impact it would have.

Return

New records followed: Natty Dread Rise Again (1997), Revival (1998), Live at Maritime Hall: San Francisco (2000) and Lion Treasure (2001). In 2006 Blood and Fire built a whole album, Fisherman Style, on the Fisherman rhythm, and Burnett dates Johnson's return to a Rebel Salute show that year. The group appeared as themselves in the film Wah Do Dem, and in 2009 Myton, Johnson and Burnett reunited with Perry for Back in the Black Ark, recorded at their own Lions Den studio, with Perry singing on two songs.

In January 2011 Sun Araw and M. Geddes Gengras recorded with them at their compound in Gregory Park, Portmore, for FRKWYS Vol. 9: Icon Give Thank (2012). Two albums with Pura Vida, We Nah Give Up (2011) and Morning Star (2018), followed. Perry died in August 2021, aged 85. The Congos still tour, with Kenroy Fyffe alongside Myton and Johnson: in October 2025 they played Dublin, Cork, Lewisham, Copenhagen and Malmö, and in August 2026 Flow Festival in Helsinki.

Members

Records

Songs

Lee "Scratch" Perry, Gregory Isaacs, Horace Andy, The Heptones, Sun Araw

Where to go next

Reference

  • The Congos Overview of members, chronology and discography.
  • Heart of the Congos Personnel, release history of both mixes and rankings.
  • Watty Burnett The baritone's Perry-era solo career and his part in the group.

Discography and data

Writing and criticism

Interviews

Live performance archives

Sources

  1. The Congos, Wikipedia
  2. Cedric Myton, Wikipedia
  3. Heart of the Congos, Wikipedia
  4. The Congos at Minnemeers, RebelBase (2009-09)
  5. Interview: Cedric Myton, United Reggae (2012)
  6. Watty Burnett looks backwards and forwards, United Reggae (2014)
  7. New edition of Heart of the Congos to be released June 9th, VP Records (2017)