Patrick Hulsey and Ted Bafaloukos on the set of Rockers.

1976 was a good year for reggae music. Bob Marley's Rastaman Vibration album had waded into pop music's mainstream, and strong statement albums by Peter Tosh (Legalize It) and Burning Spear (Marcus Garvey) were catching on in parts of the United States and Europe.
With interest in Jamaican pop culture growing, the time seemed right to make a movie on the music scene in this country. American filmmaker, Theodorus "Ted" Bafaloukos, thought he was the man for the job.

Twenty-six years ago, Bafaloukos and film producer Patrick Hulsey came to Jamaica where they made the movie Rockers. Shot in Montego Bay, Ocho Rios and Kingston, it was released in 1978 and 1979, respectively, to critical acclaim at the San Francisco and Cannes film festivals. Complemented by a roots-heavy soundtrack, Rockers quickly won an underground following throughout Europe and the US.

While its impact was nowhere as sensational as 1972's The Harder They Come, Rockers gave reggae fans an in-depth look at the exploitive nature of the music business in Jamaica.

Leroy 'Horsemouth' Wallace (right), the star of Rockers, and Burning Spear. (Photos from the Rockers website)

Written and directed by Bafaloukos and produced by Hulsey, Rockers starred some of the biggest names in reggae at the time, including singers Burning Spear, Jacob Miller, Gregory Isaacs and musicians Robbie Shakespeare and Richard "Dirty Harry" Hall.

Veteran session drummer, Leroy "Horsemouth" Wallace, played the lead role of a struggling musician who decides to meet the system head-on after years of being ripped off by record producers and distributors.

Bafaloukos had also spent a lot of time in Jamaica observing the mechanics of the reggae trade and was driven to produce a documentary on its leading players. His next move was to approach Hulsey, an Irish-American whose credits included San Blas and Apetina, documentaries on indigenous Indians of South America.

"Initially, it was going to be a documentary, but there was so much interesting stuff that eventually it became a feature film with a story line and lots of music," Hulsey told the Observer in a 2001 interview.

With script written, the next step was finding actors. Bafaloukos and Hulsey were keen on getting an authentic feel of the music scene so they went for persons directly involved in the music business instead of established actors.

Wallace had made his reputation as a session man at Studio One in the 1960s and toured with artistes such as Dennis Brown and Burning Spear. In a July 2002 interview with the Observer, he said he 'auditioned' for his part in Rockers in 1976, while he was on the road with Spear.

"We were playing the Schaeffer Beer Festival and I met this Greek guy who says his name is Ted Bafaloukos. He said he was trying to do a documentary on reggae and right away me and "Dirty Harry" tell him sey wi a big movie star inna Jamaica," Wallace recalled. "Wi start do a likke fight ting and the man get so frighten him run wey. After the concert him come back and tell wi sey him coming to Jamaica dat year and wanted to see us 'bout the movie."

Bafaloukos did come to Jamaica in 1976 and met with Wallace and Hall. The following year he was back with Hulsey to gather a cast. The first two weeks of Rockers were shot in Montego Bay and Ocho Rios with the remaining six weeks filmed in Kingston, which at the time was rife with politically-motivated violence.

"The political and gang scene there was pretty intense but a lot of people wanted to be in the movie so much that they forget about that, but we did have some pretty eerie incidents," said Hulsey.

Rockers, according to Hulsey, cost J$500,000 to produce. It premiered at the San Francisco Film Festival in late 1978, one year after filming wrapped in Jamaica. After it was viewed at Cannes in 1979, it played small theatres across Europe that year but it was not before 1980 that Rockers opened in select American cinemas.

Rockers never attained the acclaim of The Harder They Come, which continues to be shown on North American cable television. But in 2000, the film enjoyed a renaissance after it was digitally remastered for the DVD market and re-released in Canada, the United Kingdom and the US; it also played at independent film festivals in 2001 and had a limited run at small cinemas in New York City and Boston.

Earlier this year, the soundtrack was re-issued by Palm Pictures Records.

Bafaloukos is now 57 years old and continues to work in the film industry. He has worked as actor, production designer and assistant director on movies such as Diner (1982), The Thin Blue Line (1988) and The Truth About Charlie (2002).

Hulsey, now 55, never made another film but has worked on music videos for Paul Simon and blues guitarists Robert Cray and Taj Mahal. He credits Rockers' raw energy for it survival 20-odd years later.

"In late August (2001) we had a screening of the movie at the Brooklyn Museum in New York, which is a 500-seat theatre and it completely sold out. They had to turn people away," he said. "There were middle-aged people, a lot of younger people... they cheered, they laughed. It was gratifying to see that it still gets that kind of response."

Rockers trivia

-- Leroy "Horsemouth" Wallace and (the late) Richard "Dirty Harry" Hall are graduates of the Alpha Boys' School.

-- Wallace says Rockers gave him his biggest payday in the entertainment business: $30,000.

-- Bunny Wailers' title song from the soundtrack remains one of his most popular songs.

-- Rockers opened at the Eighth Street Playhouse in Greenwich Village, New York and played for over seven weeks.

-- The New Yorker magazine chose Rockers as one of its six best films at that publication's Music Film Festival in September, 2000.

-- Jacob Miller's Tenement Yard; Fade Away by Junior Byles and Police And Thieves by Junior Murvin are some of the popular songs on the Rockers soundtrack.

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