Above all, Alison Duke has the opportunity to follow Sister Nancy as she recounts her childhood and career, revealing a woman with a passion for music and an outpouring of kindness towards her audience and loved ones. However, appearances can be deceiving: behind this welcoming exterior lies a young girl who had to fight to get a microphone in her hands. She wanted to take center stage at a time when dance halls were a man’s business, both at the mic and in the recording room. Her first hits, such as One Two, followed by Bam Bam, symbolized the opening up of a musical style to the female gender, demonstrating that a woman could be just as successful—if not more so—than her male counterparts.
“…a wonderful tribute to an iconic song and its performer…”
While Bam Bam: The Sister Nancy Story does stretch its material a little too far, it does explore in detail the influence of the Bam Bam song on hip-hop and the many difficulties surrounding the singer’s right to license the use of her music. It even goes so far as to try and track down the original masters of the recording. And thanks to her well-paced, firmly engaging editing style, Alison Duke keeps us hooked on her narrative and brings us closer to Sister Nancy as we follow her home in New Jersey, to Jamaica, or on tour.
Like the life of its singer, Bam Bam: The Sister Nancy Story seems rich in detail in every corner, Alison Duke having cleverly chosen interviews and archives to support the key moments of Sister Nancy’s career. Representing a wonderful tribute to an iconic song and its performer.
"…spotlight on a woman who broke the glass ceiling and made her mark reggae..."
