It Mek (sometimes appearing as "A It Mek" or German "It Miek") was a 1969 hit song by the Jamaican musicians

Desmond Dekker & the Aces Desmond Dekker (born Desmond Adolphus Dacres; 16 July 1941 – 25 May 2006) was a Jamaican ska, rocksteady and reggae singer-songwriter and musician. Together with his backing group the Aces (consisting of Wilson James and Easton Barrington How ...

. After being re-released in June 1969, the single reached number 7 in the UK Singles Chart. The track was

written Writing is the act of creating a persistent representation of language. A writing system includes a particular set of symbols called a ''script'', as well as the rules by which they encode a particular spoken language. Every written language ...

by Dekker (under his real name of Desmond Dacres) and his record producer,

Leslie Kong Leslie Kong (20 December 1933 – 9 August 1971) was a Jamaican reggae producer. Early life Kong was born into a Chinese-Jamaican family. He had a "relatively comfortable upbringing" and attended St. George's College in Kingston. Career ...

, and was recorded in Jamaica with the

brass Brass is an alloy of copper and zinc, in proportions which can be varied to achieve different colours and mechanical, electrical, acoustic and chemical properties, but copper typically has the larger proportion, generally copper and zinc. I ...

accompaniment added in the UK. It spent eleven weeks in the UK

chart A chart (sometimes known as a graph) is a graphics, graphical representation for data visualization, in which "the data is represented by symbols, such as bars in a bar chart, lines in a line chart, or slices in a pie chart". A chart can repres ...

, and by September 1970 had sold over a million copies worldwide. A

gold record Gold is a chemical element; it has chemical symbol Au (from Latin ) and atomic number 79. In its pure form, it is a brightness, bright, slightly orange-yellow, dense, soft, malleable, and ductile metal. Chemically, gold is a transition metal ...

was presented by Ember Records, the distributors of Dekker's

recordings A record, recording or records may refer to: An item or collection of data Computing * Record (computer science), a data structure ** Record, or row (database), a set of fields in a database related to one entity ** Boot sector or boot record, re ...

. The song's title is

Jamaican patois Jamaican Patois (; locally rendered Patwah and called Jamaican Creole by linguists) is an English-based creole language with influences from West African, Arawak, Spanish and other languages, spoken primarily in Jamaica and among the Jamaican ...

meaning "that's why" or "that's the reason."Cassidy, F. G. and R. B. Le Page, 2002. ''A Dictionary of Jamaican English''. University of the West Indies Press. . According to the liner notes for the Dekker compilation album ''Rockin' Steady – The Best of Desmond Dekker'' the phrase was also used as a schoolyard taunt roughly meaning "that's what you get." This was the sense used in the song's lyrics, which metaphorically tell of the problems that happens when someone (such as a lover) goes too far.

Charts

Weekly charts

Year-end charts

References

External links

* Allmusic.com song review {{authority control 1968 songs 1969 singles Songs written by Leslie Kong Songs written by Desmond Dekker Song recordings produced by Leslie Kong Desmond Dekker songs