G.O.A.T MC and movie producer Shawn “Jay-Z” Carter is pleased with the introduction and representation of black cowboys in his newest film “The Harder They Fall”.
Speaking at the BFI London Film Festival three weeks ago, Jay-Z said a lot of thought was put into ensuring there was proper representation of African American cowboys.
“These names Stagecoach Mary, all the actors in it, really existed in this time, so just see us represented and see that we have voices and we built our own towns, Tulsa wasn’t a one off,” he said.
“There were so many towns that people didn’t know about, so to bring interesting stories to the big screen, and also educate, any time you can do that is just a blessing,” the film’s producer added.
He went on to mention that Cowboy culture has made its way into Jamaican music culture and that was reason enough to include Jamaican music in The Harder They Fall.
“If you think about the time when…Western (movies) were super popular and it was the only thing on TV influencing the world. You have people in Jamaica dressed up as cowboys ” Jay-Z continued.
Although not on the film’s original soundtrack, The Rock And Roll Hall Of Famer said he has duplates with country music from Jamaican artists.
“So these are the images that they seen on TV, there is actual dubplates that exist over western music and we have a few of those”, he said.
Jamaica music has a rich history of borrowing fashion and music from Country and Western films. Artist like Beenie Man, Josey Wales and many others have done songs with country and westerns themes.
The Jamaican film industry also has a history of modeling cowboy characters.
Perry Henzel’s 1972 film The Harder They Come which stars reggae legend Jimmy Cliff sees his character Ivan Martin, parading as a cowboy during the penultimate portions of the almost two-hour long movie.
The Harder They Fall soundtrack features Jamaican Grammy-Award winning artiste Koffee who voiced the title track and Barrington Levy.
The film officially premiered on October 22 and stars Idris Elba, Regina King and Jonathon Majors. It follows the story of an outlaw who discovers his enemy is being released from prison which leads him to reunite his gang to seek revenge.
