By Emily Wilson
Larry McDonald has been a hand percussionist for over 60 years. While he may not be a household name, his recording and performing career is full of them. He has collaborated with Bob Marley and the Wailers, Toots and the Maytals, Peter Tosh, Lee “Scratch” Perry, and, for nearly 30 years, Gil Scott-Heron. As an astonishing fact for young and even middle-aged audiences, he is credited with introducing the conga into reggae. It’s no exaggeration to say that his artistic vision and single-minded focus on that instrument changed the sound of much-loved music.
McDonald lives in New York City, where he plays with The Skatalites, a renowned ska band that first formed in Jamaica in the early 1960s and has been through many iterations. McDonald performed with the artists who made up the original band but only joined the group recently. A recent tour brought the band to Chile and Brazil. McDonald also plays and tours with dub band Subatomic Sound System and is a vocalist and percussionist with the 20-piece NYC Ska Orchestra. Among other honors, he received a lifetime achievement award from his native Jamaica in 2011–not a usual occurrence, he says.
“Conga players don’t get the press and the awards,” he said. “Guitar players get that. Singers get that.”
This year, McDonald will deliver the keynote at UC Santa Cruz’s 42nd annual Martin Luther King Jr. Convocation on January 27, celebrating King’s legacy and acknowledging the continual struggle for equity. He joins past convocation speakers who include Angela Davis, UC Santa Cruz distinguished professor emerita of History of Consciousness and Feminist Studies, King’s daughter and civil rights activist Yolanda King, and actor and playwright Anna Deavere Smith.
McDonald says King, like Marcus Garvey and Nelson Mandela, means a lot to him, and that reggae music connects to the struggle for justice.
“It’s straight up rebel music,” he said.
This year, Anju Reejhsinghani, Vice Chancellor of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion at UC Santa Cruz and chair of the MLK Convocation committee, felt strongly that McDonald was the right speaker for this moment. When she was a professor at a rural campus in the University of Wisconsin system, Reejhsinghani created a Latin American/Caribbean Speaker Series that once featured McDonald. The auditorium was packed with students there to learn about the history of Jamaican music through McDonald’s life. Off to the side of the podium was Larry’s conga, which he occasionally used to demonstrate his points.
“Larry was my most successful speaker,” Reejhsinghani said. “Most of the crowd were students who knew some of the history of the music but had never known anyone from that original era of ska and reggae. When Larry spoke, they listened, but most of all, they just wanted him to keep drumming.”
It’s not only McDonald’s talent, but his worldview that impresses people, Reejhsinghani says. While she notes that McDonald, now 88, remains in demand everywhere he travels, what struck her most was “his humility, his commitment to the music and to the rigors of touring life, and the joy he brings to everyday interactions, especially with younger artists.”
Until recently, few casual fans even knew his name. “He’s collaborated with all the huge names you can imagine in the reggae pantheon, but he didn’t put out his first solo album until he was around 70 years old,” she said. For one celebrated song on that album, Drumquestra (2009), NPR featured McDonald’s creative method of uncovering new sounds by drumming in a cave in Jamaica.
Yet beyond McDonald’s own impressive accomplishments, Reejhsinghani believes, “his generosity as an artist and mentorship of generations of performers from a diverse array of backgrounds are two of his deepest legacies. That spirit connects to what the MLK Convocation committee looks for in our speakers: those who have made, and are making, a positive impact on the lives of others, even if that work is not fully recognized in their own times.”
The celebration of numerous musical styles McDonald has influenced will be on display at the Convocation, which will feature several live performances. Joining McDonald are three of his present-day New York collaborators: trumpeter Kevin Batchelor, guitarist Jonny Meyers, and saxophonist Anant Pradhan. Batchelor and Meyers are part of NYC Ska Orchestra, and Pradhan is a member of the Skatalites.
Artists from UC Santa Cruz and the local community will also be featured, some in performance with McDonald. They include Music Department faculty akua naru and Russell Rodriguez, the student band Mariachi Eterno de UCSC (led by Professor Rodriguez), and the Kuumbwa Jazz Honor Band, which features middle school and high school performers.
While New York has been his home for decades, McDonald spent a formative early part of his career in North Oakland. He returns to California fairly often on tour and is excited to meet new fans and see old friends here, including a friend in Santa Cruz from his corner “back home” in Jamaica.
“Larry’s never met a stranger,” laughs Reejhsinghani, who has kept in touch with him since that lecture in Wisconsin. “I hope our community takes advantage of this incredibly rare opportunity to hear him discuss his life and work, and to experience him perform with an incredible array of intergenerational talent he’s influenced, directly or indirectly.” The MLK Convocation is free and open to the public, though attendees are asked to register in advance to assist with planning. This year’s cosponsors include the Arts Division, NAACP Santa Cruz County Branch, and the City of Santa Cruz. American Sign Language (ASL) interpretation and live captioning in English and Spanish will be provided.
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