Horace Andy: "Look at the war in the Middle East. No one is listening. This must be hell"

Few voices have transcended genre, generation and geography quite like Horace Andy’s.

From the early ‘70s, when he emerged with the roots reggae classic Skylarking, through to his deep collaborative ties to Massive Attack – appearing on every album in their discography – the Jamaican singer has carved out an utterly unique path in music, taking him from Kingston to New York, Connecticut, London and beyond.

Today, aged 75, he remains one of the most enduring voices in reggae – having teamed up with Adrian Sherwood for the internationally acclaimed Midnight Rocker LP in 2022, followed by a similarly lauded dub version, Midnight Scorcher, as well as a brilliant Tiny Desk Concert.

He attributes that remarkably diverse career to his open-minded approach to music, developed from a young age – noting that in the ‘60s, music “was everywhere in Kingston.”

“I used to listen to a lot of American music,” he tells me, from his base in Kingston. “I loved to sing, but I never knew I would be a singer. I was playing the guitar – I wanted to be like Jimi Hendrix! But I didn’t know I had a voice, and I could sing.”

For Horace, like many other iconic Jamaican acts, Studio One – the legendary record label regarded as the ‘Motown of Jamaica’ – was the place that changed everything. Founded by producer Coxsone Dodd in 1963, as the country’s first Black-owned recording facility, Studio One was crucial in shaping Horace into the artist he would become.

“When I drive past, I always tell my kids, ‘That’s where I started to sing,’” he says. “Bob Marley was there, Burning Spear was there. They blew my head away.”

Bob Marley had a particularly strong impact on Horace. Shortly after Marley’s death in 1981, he recorded a special tribute track, ‘Bob Lives On’, before paying homage again in 1991, with his Horace Andy Sings Bob Marley album.

“It was really sad when Bob passed away,” he reflects now. “We knew we lost a mentor, and a great prophet. He’s such a great writer, and a great inspiration to everyone in reggae music. He was a blessing to us. He still is.”

Both artists’ music, of course, is rooted in Rastafari consciousness – with Horace exploring themes like injustice, poverty and oppression across tracks like ‘Government Land’ and ‘Money Money (Root Of All Evil)’.

“My mum was a Christian, and she used to take me to church,” Horace remarks. “But my consciousness came from when I started to smoke the herb. I remember, growing up, I was wild, trouble-making. And one day my friend said, ‘Sleepy, take a draw of this, man.’ Everybody called me Sleepy – I sleep a lot! And when I started to smoke the herb, I was a different person.

“I started to look at the Black people’s problems,” he continues. “They were saying, ‘You can’t go to Africa, because they will put you in a pot and eat you’ – these were the things they used to say about Africans. They sounded scary. But when I grew up, and started to read, I realised that all these things were lies. I read about Marcus Garvey, the Arawak Indians, the slavery trade, slavery in America, Angela Davis, the Black Panthers… My eyes opened a lot, on a lot of things.”

As his career took him beyond Jamaica, he also increasingly focused on “world problems.”

“I went to South Africa, I went everywhere,” he notes. “I went to San Francisco, and saw how my brothers and sisters live. I couldn’t believe it. Is this really the great America?

“Everywhere in the world I go, I see slums. A cardboard city, right behind the palace. They’re living in cardboard, in some of the richest countries in the world. It’s so sad.”

The lyrics of his track ‘This Must Be Hell’ – which he has revisited at various points throughout his career, including on Midnight Rocker – remain as relevant as ever.

“Look at the war in the Middle East,” he says. “No one is listening. ‘This must be hell. There’s no peace, down here on earth.’ Money and power…”

Massive Attack, who Horace has worked with since 1991’s Blue Lines, have always taken strong social and political stances – from their climate action initiatives, to their outspoken support for Palestine. It’s something that the singer has always admired about the group.

“3D [aka Robert Del Naja] is very conscious,” Horace tells me. “They call him ‘the bad boy of trip-hop’! We sit and we talk, like about what Black people went through with slavery. And he defended the Palestinians. He’s a brilliant young man. I love and respect him for that.”

Meeting the Bristol collective, Horace reckons, was a pivotal moment in his creative life.

“It put me to a higher level – I would say top shelf!” he laughs. “They brought me to their audience. I’m a reggae singer, singing with this band… I didn’t know I would still be there, after 36 years. It was a real blessing for me.”

Massive Attack’s fourth studio album, 2003’s 100th Window, also featured contributions from Sinéad O’Connor. Did Horace ever cross paths with the Irish singer?

“She came and did two or three shows with Massive Attack,” he recalls. “She was a person who would sit away from the crowds, like me. But when she first saw me, she said, ‘Horace, I love your music. I’ve been listening to it for years.’ And I said, ‘Same here too. It’s an honour.’

“And any time I would go and sit down, she’d always come and sit down beside me. We were always talking conscious things. She was a very, very conscious woman.”

• Horace Andy & The Dub Asante Band featuring Matic Horns play Beyond The Pale on Sunday, June 14.