A.C.E.
Page 16 n THE ASIAN REPORTER
March 7, 2022
Sleng Teng: How a Japanese woman
influenced Jamaica’s reggae
By Yuri Kageyama
The Associated Press
OKYO — A musical revolution in Jamaica has a
connection with a bouncy rhythm from a portable
electronic keyboard that’s the brainchild of a
Japanese woman.
The pattern that resonates in the 1985 reggae hit by
Wayne Smith, “Under Mi Sleng Teng,” came from the
Casiotone MT-40, which went on sale in 1981, the first
product Hiroko Okuda worked on after joining the
Tokyo-based company behind G-Shock watches.
“It’s really like my first child, and the child turned out so
well it’s outright moving,” said Okuda, honored as “the
mother of Sleng Teng” among hardcore reggae
aficionados.
Sleng Teng is a form of digital Jamaican music that
began in the mid-1980s, part of the rich repertoire of the
disco-like genre called “dancehall.” No one contests the
key role played by artists like Smith and King Jammy, as
well as the humble, battery-operated, $150 MT-40.
One of the rhythm patterns Okuda created called “rock”
on the MT-40 evolved into “Sleng Teng riddim.”
As legend goes, Noel Davey, the Grammy-winning
keyboard player for the Marley Brothers, got an MT-40
from a friend, who picked it up in California. Before,
Davey was blowing into a Melodica portable keyboard for
that sound.
Davey was toying around with the MT-40 and chanced
upon the beat that’s in Smith’s megahit “Under Mi Sleng
Teng.”
And the rest is history, so to speak.
“You don’t plan,” Davey said, when asked about that
moment.
There are so many buttons on the MT-40, he was
“fooling around,” found it, lost it, then had to look for it and
found it again.
“It was a searching process,” he said from Kingston,
Jamaica.
The power of reggae comes from its healing effect, like
“therapy,” being a music for the poor, for those moving up
against apartheid, for the people, he said.
Davey, who has never been to Japan, said he would like
to meet Okuda. The two share something in common —
just as he feels he has never been properly credited for his
role in the history of reggae, he stressed Okuda deserves
credit for the Casio instrument.
That groove went on to inspire much of subsequent
reggae, distinctly heard in works by Sugar Minott, Ibo
Cooper, Gregory Isaacs, and Dennis Brown.
Michael “Megahbass” Fletcher, a musician in Jamaica,
said repetitive music isn’t inferior.
“It has its place,” he said, demonstrating Sleng Teng on
his bass. “A good song is a good song.”
T
GLOBAL MANGA. Pictured is an image from Sanshiro Kasama’s
Deadpool: Samurai, published in Japanese in 2021, and in English in
February 2022. It marks the first partnership between Marvel and Japa-
nese comics publisher Shonen Jump. (DEADPOOL: SAMURAI © 2022
MARVEL, story by Sanshiro Kasama, art by Hikaru Uesugi, translated by
Amanda Haley, lettered by Brandon Bovia, via AP)
Made-in-Japan manga goes
global with Webtoon, Deadpool
Continued from page 14
Webtoon in South Korea,
founded in 2004; Line
Manga in Japan; and
services in the U.S.,
Europe, and other nations,
recently hit 82 million
users a month. Growth is
especially strong in the
U.S.
“As a platform, we wish
to offer benefits for the
artists in offering the best
environment, in terms of
readership size and profits,
too, of course,” said Baku
Hirai,
chief
operating
officer at Line Digital
Frontier, which oversees
the Webtoon business in
Japan. “By being on our
platform, the work is
relayed both domestically
and globally, offering the
chance for becoming a
global hit,”
Although taking off two
decades later than in South
Korea, Webtoons are here
to stay in Japan.
Works
are
being
developed in Japan that
bring together the best of
Webtoons and manga, says
Kojuro Hagihara, chief
executive of Tokyo-based
Sorajima Studio, which
produces Webtoon works
for various platforms.
“All we need is a mass
hit, something people who
don’t
usually
read
Webtoons
will
be
interested in. To do that,
we need to create a
Webtoon work that will be
turned into a series on
Netflix or Amazon Prime,”
he said.
The 2021 startup studio
has gathered investment
from traditional Japanese
manga publishers like
Shueisha
and
Shogakukan. The studio
has three works out so far,
all profitable, including one
published in the U.S. It
plans 26 works for this
year, and 50 for next year,
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well,” said Hagihara.
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INSTRUMENTAL WOMAN. In this photo released by Casio Com-
puter Co., Hiroko Okuda holds, at its headquarters in Tokyo on February
9, 2022, the Casiotone MT-40 portable keyboard player, which she cre-
ated in 1981, the first product she worked on after joining the Japanese
company behind G-Shock watches. A musical revolution in Jamaica has
a connection with a bouncy rhythm from the portable electronic keyboard
that’s the brainchild of the Japanese woman. The pattern that resonates in
the 1985 reggae hit by Wayne Smith, “Under Mi Sleng Teng,” came from
the Casiotone MT-40. (Casio Computer Co. via AP)
Fletcher said other keyboards were also used to play
Sleng Teng, such as the Casio CZ-101 and Yamaha
DX100, from Casio’s Japanese rival.
“Sleng Teng will never die,” said Fletcher, who has
performed or produced songs for Shaggy, Maxi Priest, and
Alborosie.
Okuda, whose graduation thesis at Kunitachi College of
Music in Tokyo was on reggae, was among the first
recruits at Casio Computer Co. assigned to work on
musical instruments, then a new sector for the company.
The company didn’t have very many musicians, and she
was the one with background in world music. Okuda had
immersed herself in reggae in the late 1970s, including
going to Bob Marley’s concerts in Japan.
Okuda worked out six kinds of rhythms for the MT-40,
including samba, swing, and waltz, creating a bass line
and a beat.
She also created two licks called “fill ins” to be played
between sections of a song — or at the start of a song, as it
is in “Under Mi Sleng Teng.”
For the prototype, she initially had an even more brash
punk-rock-like rhythm called “avant garde.” The
managers killed it as “too crazy.”
At least the “rock” pattern got approved, Okuda recalled
with a laugh.
Casio’s main business was calculators, not keyboards,
and so Okuda’s invention didn’t make much of a wave at
her company. Okuda said she was usually among a
handful of women in a room filled with men.
“I was a pioneer in so many places, and there were
Japan’s old ways everywhere I went. I had to put up a fight
each time,” she said.
She was never promoted to managerial positions, and
never chosen for a business trip abroad. She has not
travelled to Jamaica, or anywhere else except for China.
When asked if she has any advice for working women,
Okuda pointed out having a special skill tends to help. She
also has an extremely supportive husband, who took on
much of the childcare responsibilities.
That definitely helped, she said.
The family shares a love for music, and music is always
playing in their house. When they were younger, Okuda
did feel a bit sad when her daughter and son would see her
off at the door, singing, “Heigh-ho, heigh-ho, it’s work she
loves to go,” to the tune in Walt Disney’s “Snow White.”
These days, they joke maybe she’ll win the Nobel for the
MT-40.
A more recent Casio technology Okuda has worked on is
Music Tapestry, which translates music being played into
a fluid visual image on the computer. Flowers float and
swirl in time to the notes. Circles, squares, and triangles
dance about on the screen. Its sale date is undecided.
She doubts any of the reggae musicians know she is
behind the MT-40. And how her MT-40 became part of
such great music is nothing short of “a miracle,” she said.
“If I can ever meet them, I just want to express my deep
gratitude. I want to tell them thank you so much for
finding the rhythm and for using it,” she told The
Associated Press.
Casio still sells keyboards. The CT-S1000V, set to go on
sale this month, turns words into vocaloid-like singing.
The smaller portable versions come with dozens of preset
rhythms.
In the 2010 model, the rock pattern was called “MT-40
riddim” in honor of where it all began.