1963

ENJOY IT * PRINCE BUSTER * BLUE BEAT 158 * UK

Prince Buster giving out his home-spun, practical and perfectly valid philosophy of living, his message being: enjoy life while you can. Nothing wrong with that and what's more, when set to a solid and musically pleasurable dance beat, it becomes something of a tautology, being both the message and (delivering) its result in an enjoyable form.

While the theme of Enjoy It is not advocating hedonism as such, more of a make the most of the good times while you can as time itself is swiftly passing by type philosophy; it does however chime with songs and ideologies of (hedonistic) living from at least as far back as ancient Egypt.

The lyrics of an early ancient Egyptian song, the type of which a harper would entertain guests at a feast, advocating this, begins with:

Let thy desire flourish,
In order to let thy heart forget the beatifications for thee.
Follow thy desire, as long as thou shalt live.

Later, in Classical Greece, it was the pre-Socratic philosopher Democritus, said to be the earliest philosopher on record to have categorically embraced a hedonistic philosophy, who advocated a life of contentment with as little grief as possible, which he said could not be achieved through either idleness or preoccupation with worldly pleasures. Contentment would be gained, he said, through moderation and a measured life; to be content one must set their judgment on the possible and be satisfied with what one has.

Then there was the Indian hedonist school of thought: The Cārvāka. The Cārvākas maintained that the Hindu scriptures are false, that the priests are liars, and that there is no afterlife, and that pleasure should be the aim of living.

Then back to the Greeks, through The Cyrenaic school, an ultra-hedonist school of philosophy who taught that the only intrinsic good is pleasure, which meant not just the absence of pain, but positively enjoyable sensations, to Epicurus who believed that the greatest good was to seek modest pleasures in order to attain a state of tranquillity and freedom from fear as well as absence of bodily pain through knowledge of the workings of the world and the limits of our desires.

 See also:

Ten Commandments Of Man	My Sound That Goes Around	Shaking Up Orange Street

Johnny Dollar	Praise Without Raise	Madness	Dallas Texas	Jealous
She ‘Pon Top	Let’s Go To The Dance	Ghost Dance	All My Loving	Your Mine
King, Duke, And The Sir	Black Headed Chinaman	Rock & Shake	Cincinnati Kid	Tie The Donkey’s Tail
Remember Me	Ten Commandments	Run Man Run	They Got To Come	Time Longer Than Rope
Judge Dread	Rat Trap	Shepherd Beng, Beng	Shanty Town	Musical Collage

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