Saturday Morning with Sister Nancy’s Bam Bam
Echoes in a Dancehall Classic
By Rafi Mercer
Saturday morning, and I drop the needle on Sister Nancy’s Bam Bam. Immediately, the room changes. That beat — unmistakable, rolling, skanking — fills the air with ease.
Nancy’s voice, confident and unhurried, sits on top like sunlight. It’s a track I’ve heard a hundred times, but this morning it catches me differently. It feels like déjà vu. It reminds me of a lot of other tunes… but who?
That’s the magic of Bam Bam. Released in 1982, it has become one of the most sampled, reimagined, and echoed tracks in reggae and hip hop history. You play it and your mind starts connecting dots. It has the bones of dancehall, but the rhythm feels like hip hop’s early heartbeat. The horns and bassline remind you of countless sound system nights, of remixes woven into house and techno sets.
Of course, you might hear Lauryn Hill — Lost Ones carries that same unbending cadence. Or Jay-Z’s Bam with Damian Marley, a direct lift of Nancy’s chant. You might hear its DNA in the swagger of Rihanna, in the swing of Kanye’s Famous, in a hundred dancehall cuts that followed. Even Major Lazer, decades later, couldn’t resist tracing the same outline.
And yet none of them match the ease of the original. Nancy didn’t rush. She didn’t crowd the riddim. She let the groove do the heavy lifting, her voice cutting through with style and defiance. That’s why it works on a Saturday morning — it sets the tone without demanding too much. A reminder that music doesn’t need to shout to hold presence.
Listening to Bam Bam today, I realise why it lingers. It’s not just nostalgia, not just a sample source. It’s a track that manages to be both rooted and open-ended, a foundation that other artists continue to build on. You hear it and you hear echoes — of the past, of later songs, of parties and mornings alike.
So yes, this Saturday morning it reminded me of a lot of tunes. Because in truth, it is part of all of them.
Rafi Mercer writes about the spaces where music matters. For more stories from Tracks & Tales, subscribe here, or click here to read more.
