World of Jamaican Music

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An illustrated map of the creators of Jamaican music and how they are connected.

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The Congos

Band. Reggae, dub

Active
1977-present

Heart of the Congos is the record on which Lee "Scratch" Perry's Black Ark method and a set of voices equal to it arrived at the same session, and Bradley calls it "one of the most consummate reggae albums ever made"; for the Rough Guide it is "the most consistently brilliant album of Scratch's entire career."

Cedric Myton (born 1947) and Roydel "Ashanti Roy" Johnson formed the Congos in 1976, with Watty Burnett joining for the album. Myton sang a high, pure falsetto and Johnson a tenor beneath it, with Burnett's baritone at the bottom, and John Doran hears the staggered vocal arrangement making room in the mix; Myton's falsetto, he writes, "rings as clear as struck lead crystal." Perry used the voices, Bradley says, "as three more instruments."

Perry recorded them at the Black Ark in 1977, overdubbing until the four-track tape was saturated and adding percussion, cow sounds, and layers of reverb until the voices seem to be arriving from somewhere behind the music. "Fisherman" reads the apostles as Jamaican fishermen; "Congoman" is closer to a chant than a song; "Ark of the Covenant" and "Children Crying" work the same territory. Johnson remembered the limits of four tracks ("every musician had to be precise") and a producer who "likes to work and work and work." Myton kept his share in view: "Two thirds of the work on that album was us, but the next third was down to Lee 'Scratch' Perry, trust me."

Island did not release it, and it came out in Jamaica on Perry's Black Art label in a small pressing. Its reputation was built over the following two decades through imports, word of mouth, and eventual reissue, and the Blood and Fire reissue sold more than 120,000 copies in the 1990s. Myton said he had not realized the impact it would have.

Burnett and then Johnson left. Myton kept the name going, and all three reunited with Perry for Back in the Black Ark (2009).

Last updated November 5, 2026

Connections

Notes

  1. Lloyd Bradley, This Is Reggae Music: The Story of Jamaica's Music (New York: Grove Press, 2001), 365, calls it "one of the most consummate reggae albums ever made"; Steve Barrow and Peter Dalton, The Rough Guide to Reggae, 3rd ed. (London: Rough Guides, 2004), 176, calls it "the most completely successful of all the albums recorded at the Black Ark" and "the most consistently brilliant album of Scratch's entire career."
  2. Bradley says that until Perry took them on "the Congos were Cedric Myton (falsetto) and Roy Johnson (tenor)," and that Perry added Watty Burnett, "one of his regular vocalists, as the baritone voice." Bradley, This Is Reggae Music, 170, 365. Myton had earlier sung with the Tartans and with Prince Lincoln Thompson's Royal Rasses. Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 80, 185.
  3. John Doran, "Black Sun Rising: The Congos Interviewed," The Quietus, June 11, 2012, https://thequietus.com/?p=9007. Bradley says Perry used the voices "as three more instruments to be used in the mix." Bradley, This Is Reggae Music, 364. The Rough Guide adds that the backing vocals came from two of the Heptones, Burnett, Gregory Isaacs, and the Meditations; Bradley calls Isaacs's part a supposition. Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 176-77; Bradley, This Is Reggae Music, 368.
  4. Bradley refers to "these 1977 sessions." Bradley, This Is Reggae Music, 364. The Rough Guide dates the original "Congo Man," with Ernest Ranglin on guitar, to the Black Ark in 1976, and Wikipedia gives the recording dates as 1976-77. Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 51; "Heart of the Congos," Wikipedia, accessed October 1, 2026, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heart_of_the_Congos.
  5. Doran, "Black Sun Rising."
  6. Bradley says Perry, unhappy with Island's promotion of Super Ape and its reluctance to schedule Roast Fish, Collie Weed and Cornbread, "withdrew The Heart of the Congos from the UK company," and that it was "practically impossible to obtain" until Blood & Fire reissued it twenty years later. Bradley, This Is Reggae Music, 454. Wikipedia says the first Jamaican pressing ran to only several hundred copies, that the group also pressed a limited run themselves, and that Go-Feet reissued it in the UK in 1980. "Heart of the Congos," Wikipedia, accessed October 1, 2026, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heart_of_the_Congos; "The Congos," Wikipedia, accessed October 1, 2026, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Congos. Katz instead says Island "repudiated" the album, which led the group to sign with CBS in France (his article appears in Portuguese translation): David Katz, "Lee 'Scratch' Perry: xamã musical da Jamaica, o homem-espírito da Black Ark," Revista Brasileira do Caribe 11, no. 22 (January-June 2011): 149, https://www.periodicoseletronicos.ufma.br/index.php/rbrascaribe/article/download/662/419/2232.
  7. Katz says the Blood and Fire reissue sold more than 120,000 copies in the 1990s: Katz, "Lee 'Scratch' Perry," 149.
  8. Gerard McMahon, "Interview: Cedric Myton," United Reggae, December 16, 2012, https://unitedreggae.com/articles/n1179/121612/interview-cedric-myton.
  9. Wikipedia says Burnett and then Johnson left, that Myton kept the name going into the mid-1980s and re-formed the group in the mid-1990s, and that all three reunited with Perry for Back in the Black Ark (2009). "The Congos," Wikipedia. Johnson also recorded in the UK with Adrian Sherwood. Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 411.

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