Sang Hugh

"You could easily get stuck in reasoning how astonishing the fact is that so many great talents has emerged out of this tiny little island in the Caribbean called Jamaica. With this in mind it shouldn't be surprising even to newcomers to reggae music that no matter how talented some of the artists may be, that in itself was never a guarantee to stay on top and in musical shape too for that matter, even though this goes for most of popular music - whatever the genre might be. Naturally, some of them become pretty obscure over time. Collectors and cultists has kept many of them close to heart for a number of years and for some of these obscure names a following has been established that in most instances the artist himself is totally unaware of, having withdrawn from the scene years back. And believe me, the examples of this kind are many. One such exquisitly obscure artist - in terms of greater talent, and so on - from the golden years of the early to mid 1970's that I wanted to find out more about, and told in his own words of course, was the man called Keith Morgan, better known under his alias Sang Hugh. This man arose to prominence in 1972 through the efforts of producers Hugh Madden, Niney The Observer and Lloyd F. Campbell, having cut his debut disc for the former and getting his breakthrough with the latter two. This hit song was titled 'Rasta No Born Yah' and is a prime example of what the music would sound like in Jamaica over the remaining decade; a cry of the 'sufferah', the so called 'roots music'; music strongly identified in Rastafarian philosophy and experience. I linked up with Keith from his Negril base in March, '04 to get a pretty rare discussion going of his 'lost' career, something I truly hope will be revived in a serious way sooner rather than later. My thanks to the man himself, Sis Irie especially (without whose assistance this probably wouldn't have happened, so I-ternal thanks), Bob Schoenfeld, Donovan Phillips, Tim P, Steve Barrow and Michael de Koningh.

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