Yellowman: Turning A Skin Disorder Into An Asset

If you are reggae fan and/or familiar with music of the eighties, you probably have heard of Yellowman. Starting off as a deejay, he went on to build a successful musical career, becoming the first dancehall artist to be signed a major American record label.

His songs, as with many reggae songs of the time, had social-political, philosophical, and often lewd message to them.

A gifted song writer, he had a knack of turning a common quote, slang, cliché or even meaningless or vocal unintelligible sound into a lovely musical rhythm (or riddim as it is called in Jamaica). Examples of this would be Nobody Move, Nobody Get Hurt and Zungguzungguguzungguzeng. His "riddim" has been sampled numerous times by a range of rap artists.

Yet, he has had to overcome adversity virtually all his life. For one, he was brought up in a Catholic orphanage in Jamaica as he was abandoned by his parents.  He also had albinism, a condition that caused him to be shunned as it carried a social stigma in Jamaica.

But rather than allow his skin condition to define him in a negative way, he turned it into an asset. He called himself Yellowman, and later he would become known as King Yellowman. Everyone (virtually) loved him more for it. I'm pretty sure that, because of King Yellowman, the social stigma of albinism in Jamaica has at least been diluted.


Resources:

Wikipedia

Biography.com

Photo courtesy: Wikimedia commons