Capital City
February 25 - March 3, 1999

Reggae DJ Spins His Own Way

by Tralee Pearce

As disc jockey Junior Smith lovingly pulls a record out of its dog-eared sleeve in CKCU's cramped radio studio, he looks up with a glimmer in his eye.

"We always start with Bob Marley. That's the rule," says the quietly authoritative Smith, whose show, Reggae in the Fields, is the longest running reggae show in the country, not to mention just about the most respected radio show in town.

With the familiar and uplifting strains of Marley bellowing "Jah! Rastafari!" in the background, Ottawa's longtime reggae master isn't quite leaning back in his chair and gettin' spiritual, as his listeners might envision.

No, as mellow as the opening Marley tunes are, Smith's using the available few minutes to race around the studio in true college-community radio style - setting up mikes and headphones for today's financial planning guests in an adjoining sound room, arranging his records and pre-taped segments and setting up the turntables.

That is, of course, when three of his four kids who are with him today aren't tiptoeing their way to him for various consultations - Smith's gentle, but firm, "Be good!" usually wrapping up any tête-a-tête.Then , he's settling in at the mike just as the music dies down, as if the chaos of the last few minutes was a figment of the imagination.

"As usual, we begin with Thanks and Praises from Bob Marley and the Wailers," Smith says, with a soft Jamaican accent.

For 21 years, Smith has been lugging selections from his formidable vinyl collection onto the Carleton campus and sharing everything from traditional roots reggae to the more modern DJ, dancehall and hiphop flavours of his younger Jamaican contemporaries.

"I've always said reggae music is heartfelt music. You can't help but feel the music penetrate your body. If you listen closely enough, it just makes sense," he says, touching his heart as he speaks.

It's his smooth, encyclopedic authority, matched with a blazing passion for the music, that has won Junior Smith fans both inside and outside of Ottawa's Jamaican community. But Smith's influence only begins with the tunes.

Over the years he's not served up solid reggae programming, he's also opened up his weekly two-and-a-half-hour show to important issues of the entire black community, from the Vincent Gardner shootings to religious topics and - his current thematic fixation - Black History Month.

The single most telling method of measuring his fan base?

Smith, along with his backup host Stephen Neale, consistently holds the top spot in CKCU's annual funding drives, often raking in upwards of $6,000, even up to $8,000. Last year's anomalous second place standing, station manager Barry Rueger points out, was due to the fact that the charismatic DJ was ill for a week.

Still, Smith - a stats-and-math expert whose day job is with Revenue Canada - checks his success by one yardstick - the incessantly ringing phone by his side during RITF air time.

Whether they're just calling to say hello to Smith or to "send greetings" to other listeners in the so-designated last half hour, these active participants in his program keep Smith in tune.

"I'm shy. I don't do this for recognition," he says. "I do it for fun and because people enjoy it. I thrive on people calling and talking on the phone. I answer it every time."

Lucky for them the mild-mannered Carleton mathematics student - he moved to Canada from Jamaica in his late teens - was looking for a hobby to balance all those numbers back in 75. One day, Smith was walking the tunnels at Carleton, listening to the piped-in CKCU programs and it occurred to him to translate his love of reggae into a radio show.

"Thank God the program director had been to Jamaica and knew something about the music. We tested it out as a half hour and he was wowed," Smith remembers.

After learning the techie tricks for almost a year, Smith was on the air doing a general music show at first, which included gospel, blues and rock as well as reggae.

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Reprinted from Capital City. Copyright © 1999 Capital City Media Inc.

Ottawa Citizen article part 1

Capital City article part 2

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