Ghost Dance
by Prince Buster w/ Lee Perry on backing vocals
Prince Buster “Ghost Dance” 1967
Prince Buster initially began composing this haunting classic while on his first tour of Britain back in 1964. Three years later, he would complete it, turning the song into a rocksteady classic. Its unusual lyrical format — a letter to a friend — was borrowed from the literary world, and this was a favored writing device of Jamaican poets. However, Buster gives it all a twist, because he’s not writing to the living, but to the dead, inquiring after departed friends and acquaintances, and sending messages to his many late mates. It’s all set to an appropriately atmospheric melody, with Lee Perry providing the ghostly backing vocal and the interjected “ah, duppies” (ghosts).
