Over two decades ago, Dalton Lindo, more popularly known as Screwdriver released his tune that would become a dancehall anthem and classic — Sheron A Pregnant You Pregnant (No Mama). For Lindo, the 22 years seem to have taken wings, but he says he has lived and done so much since then and although his name might not have been on the lips of many locally, he has stayed current and has been having an influence on the younger generation.

“I was the one who told Tarrus (Riley) to quit deejaying and start singing,” said Lindo, who has been residing in Florida for many years. “The first time he played a tune for me it was a deejay thing and I told him that I didn’t like it. It was the same thing with Chezideck,” he stated. “I do voice training and I am the one who teach them to sing,” Screwdriver added.

A singer who “feels for the music”, Screwdriver, while not divorcing himself from dancehall, says he has deliberately explored other options.

“But whatever I have done has always involved music,” he told the Sunday Observer in a telephone interview from San Diego, California, where he had a concert last night.

“When I came to this country (USA) I took music lessons … learned to play several instruments and read music … because I knew that I had to bring my thing to an international level,” said Lindo, who no longer goes by the name Screwdriver.

As he explains, “There is racist group out there somewhere going by that name also, and for what I am representing versus what they represent, it was for the better to drop the Screwdriver and use my given name.”

It is debatable, however, whether the Scewdriver name will ever fade away, as it relates to this artiste. In addition to the social commentary reflected in Sharon, recorded at a time when teenage pregnancy was on a high, Screwdriver unleashed a ganja song that was equally hard hitting, and which, he said with a certain amount of pride, “is still killing sound today”.

That song, Ganja Killer, was released in 1988, during the period when efforts to kill the robust ganja trade involved chemical spraying of the weed. “As a country man, I could see where the chemicals were poisonous and would kill not only the ganja plant, but also the cassava and even the domestic animals like the chickens. And the media wasn’t talking about it, so I did the song Ganja Killer,” Lindo explained.

Lindo represents that era of dancehall music when the genre was just emerging and “it was hell to get your music played on radio”. He recalled the efforts to get the music heard, which included carrying around one single copy of a 45 record to the various dances and begging the selector to play it, after which it was handed back to the artiste.

“It was just one copy the producer give you, so you had to care it and make sure you get it back from the selector,” he explained with a chuckle.

“A lot of youngsters come and inherit but they have no clue about the struggle,” he lamented. “In those days only Mikey White and Bagga Brown would play the music … and that was very late at night,” he recalled.

With a new CD, Child of the Universe, released on the Jalpo Productions label, Lindo says he is delighted at the response to the music. Already two of he songs have made their way on the South Florida Top 25 Reggae Singles Chart — Never Give Up, a collaboration with reggae group Inner Circle and Don’t Turn Around, featuring Jah Batta and Lion.

Of the making of the album, Child of the Universe, Screwdriver states that it was a project which he approached with the intention of “making more classical music”. Thus he used live music “real musicians” and original rhythms and melodies.

“This project wasn’t about going to the studio with a keyboard and programming it to play various instruments. This is the real stuff,” Lindo declared.

He noted, however, that hardly anybody takes time out to listen to and play real music. “But I am not afraid of challenges,” he said. “And those who want to enjoy real music still know where to find it. Just like the people who will turn out for this show tonight,” he said.

In the meantime, Dalton Lindo lists his mood on his myspace page as “ecstatic”. He also says, “Old time something come back again, run go tell your friend that Dalton Lindo aka Screwdriver is back with a boom shot Child of the Universe.” — Yasmine Peru