Paris (AFP)

"Before I was human, I was a fish": mystical and eccentric, Lee "Scratch" Perry, who died Sunday in Jamaica, is the producer who took reggae to conquer the world by guiding Bob Marley.

"Lee 'Scratch' Perry died this morning while in Noel Holmes Hospital. He was 85 years old," Jamaican Prime Minister Andrew Holness said on his twitter account.

Born in 1936 in Kendal, Jamaica, Rainford Hugh "Lee" Perry left school at age 15 before moving to Kingston in the 1960s.

"My father worked on the streets, my mother in the fields. We were very poor," he told British rock magazine New Musicalm Express (NME) in 1984.

"I didn't learn anything at school. I learned everything in the street".

"Sorcier du reggae", "Salvador Dali du dub" (continuation of reggae based on echoes), "The Upsetter" ("The pain in the ass"): nicknames abound for this elusive and striking figure in the history of the music.

He is therefore the one who pushed Marley in the studio to come out of his gangue to rise to the top.

"Without him, Bob Marley might have remained an orphan arrow from his bow," wrote Francis Dordor, specialist in the snowman, in Les Inrockuptibles.

Perry "reintroduced Africa into Jamaican music. Not only rhythmic plurality but also cultural and philosophical resonance."

But the Jamaican shaman should not be reduced to this fact of glory.

This frail silhouette blowing ganja on his microphone to chase away evil spirits before his performance-experiences on stage, instilled a number of musical motives.

"It is the sound of Perry and that of the + toasters + (DJ who takes the microphone, note) Jamaican that inspired us at the beginning of hip-hop" admitted Afrika Bambaataa, pioneer of US rap, in Rolling Stone.

And some of the hypnotic loops that sprang from Perry's mixing consoles - elevated to full-fledged instruments - are heard in techno.

The man will not harbor any resentment at hearing his signatures here and there.

"If I strike my enemies, they continue to live. Because I strike them with love", he had said in a cryptic formula of which he had the secret, launched in Le Temps, a Swiss newspaper, a country where he had ended up s 'installed in the late 1990s.

- "Defeat the vampires" -

Other artists have collaborated in broad daylight with the legend, from The Clash to the Beastie Boys through Moby, electro brain providing the backing vocals - alongside ex-porn star, Sasha Gray - for one of his works .

You should have seen the phenomenon talking to a cow in the vicinity of Einsiedeln - its Swiss base, a major pilgrimage site for its Black Madonna - in the documentary "Lee Scratch Perry's vision of paradise" by Volker Schaner.

Why the Swiss Alps?

To follow his last wife, a Swiss, former dominatrix and ex- "patroness of a brothel", "expert of the whip who was called Madame Devil" ("Madame Demoniaque") as explained by Le Temps.

Reggae guru Lee "Scratch" Perry dies at 85 Attila KISBENEDEK AFP / Archives

Volker Schaner's film is rich in amazing scenes.

We hear the sound sculptor say that he was a fish before being human, or repeat that he "defeats the vampires".

We admire his different headdresses, Indian feathers in the far-west style, seaweed fresh out of the waves or caps overloaded with charms or mirrors.

- Sparks and flames -

His shoes feature on one side a portrait of the Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie - considered by Rastafarians to be a messiah - and in one sole conceal a carefully protected sketch of the Queen of England.

A whole universe, born from his labyrinthine spirit, often compared to that of Postman Cheval.

A decorum-jumble that ended up in his legendary studio in Kingston, the "Black Ark".

What led him behind desks to shape sounds?

The legend lends him a thousand lives - bulldozer driver, professional dancer, domino player ... - before he becomes a small hand in recording studios in the Jamaican capital then founded his label "Upsetter".

A studio which will end in flames at the beginning of the 1980s without the origin of the fire being ever established.

And in the 2010s, it was his new den-workshop, in Switzerland, which suffered the same fate.

Perry will then say on his social networks that he forgot to put out a candle.

He who created so many sparks in the music.

© 2021 AFP