Bionic Singer
Botha Warning/warning To Botha
Another big Shaka tune from the late 1980s - Bionic Singer's anti-apartheid shot 'Botha Warning' - coming out of the same Jamaazima vaults as Hugh Maddo's 'Pop Style' LP that was reissued late 2023 under the kind courtesy of the imprint's Nami Harmon. The late Bionic Singer a.k.a Osbert Maddo, or more commonly Madoo, was brought up in East Kingston and as a child attended the legendary Alpha Boys School. He began singing together with his brother UU Madoo (aka Hugh Maddo) and soon became a regular on the Stereophonic soundsystem during the late 1970s. Recording mainly with Joe Gibbs and Errol Thompson and for Winston Riley's famed Techniques stable through the early '80s, he then moved to the US in 1983. Ceasing to record for a period, he returned towards the end of the decade under the Bionic Singer alias on the Bronx-based Jamaazima label, recording this searing indictment of South Africa's apartheid government under P.W. Botha following his stroke in 1989.