Check out the trailer for ‘Duke Vin, Count Suckle and the Birth of Ska’ here:

Duke Vin, Count Suckle & the Birth of Ska in Britain - trailer from AdamPellinDeeve on Vimeo.

‘Duke Vin, Count Suckle and the Birth of Ska’ is not only a fascinating documentary about musical development in the Sixties, but also captures an important piece of social history in the UK.

It tells the story of how the legendary Duke Vin and Count Suckle stowed away on a banana boat from Jamaica, arriving in the UK in 1954 as part of the Windrush generation.

Like many of those immigrants, they’d imagined that England would be a wealthy country, full of opportunity, but instead found it cold and still struggling with post-war privation.

“The country was dead,” says Vin. “We couldn’t find anywhere to dance!”

With the judicious use of vintage footage combined with contemporary interviews, the documentary tells the story of how the pair joined with others in making their own entertainment, first with house parties and then as these outgrew their premises, hiring town halls and charging on the door.

Duke Vin became a renowned D.J. with his unique collection of records which were not widely available in the UK, while Count Suckle took over the Roaring Twenties Club in Carnaby Street in 1962, where he would alternate a set of R’n’B discs with a live band.

The documentary traces how American music played Jamaica style evolved into ska and from there into reggae and Two Tone. It underlines the discrimination that the immigrants faced on arrival in the UK – Count Suckle narrowly escaped death during a petrol bombing incident in the Notting Hill race riots – but also shows how a love of the music brought all races together.

The documentary fizzles out slightly towards its end, but it concludes showing Duke Vin, now a pensioner but still working as a D.J., and still as much in love with the music as ever.

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