Video review – Beautiful The twice-over grammy award-winning reggae sensation Damion ‘Jnr Gong’ Marley has a new video called Beautiful, featuring Hip-hop star Bobby Brown, who is really trying to make a comeback. Jnr Gong really did portray what the lyrics were telling us. With all the beautiful colours that are really vibrant and outstanding, [...]
Thank God for Carnival Carnival has been viewed traditionally as that religious event which precedes Ash Wednesday and the Lenten season. Lent has largely lost its religious significance for many, but Carnival continues to perform many social functions, some of which are not immediately obvious. It is the time of the year when the nation [...]
Devon Pennant Lady Of Magic Chillin Devon Pennant is a young artist from Brixton, South London whose mix of soulful Reggae and contemporary Pop offers an exciting new brand of British Reggae. In an era when Dancehall continues to sound more and more like an extension of Hip Hop and Ragga, Devon’s truthful lyrics and [...]
In the footsteps of the ‘Grandmaster’ “This one was actually for daddy. He premeditated this one.” So said soca composer Kernel Roberts to the Sunday Express yesterday. Roberts penned this year’s Road March hit “Band of the Year” and made it clear it was to continue the “legacy” of his father, the calypso legend Aldwyn [...]
St. Kitts Music Festival presents a Soca-Calypso Explosion National calypso and soca superstars will take centre stage on the opening night of the 10th annual St. Kitts Music Festival. This night traditionally features the best performers of the soca and calypso genres. According to an official press release, “music lovers, regional and international media will [...]
Damian Jr Gong Marley When “Welcome To Jamrock†erupted onto airwaves halfway through 2005 it came as a shock to some—but not to Damian “Jr Gong†Marley. The song is about the farthest thing from commercial music offerings today—an outraged and unapologetic description of the poverty and “political violence†ravaging his homeland of Jamaica—but “Welcome [...]
Matisyahu’s debut pulses with rapturous reggae So after all the buildup, after the Hasidic Jewish singer became an unlikely Pied Piper luring U.S. rock fans to reggae music, how does Matisyahu do on his major-label studio album debut (due in stores Tuesday)? It’s notable that despite its hip-hop touches and experimental quirks, Matisyahu’s is a [...]
Mr. Peppa doubles up with Gangster Guerilla and Life of a Superstar Rising dancehall toaster Mr. Peppa (real name Arael Walters) is back on active radio duty with two hot new singles, Gangster Guerilla and Life of a Superstar. Both songs were produced by Mark Pinnock of Natural Bridge Records and have been in consistent [...]
Crowd welcomes Isaacs’s warm reggae grooves It might well have been 96 degrees in Jamaica this week, a point that the jovial MC at Gregory Isaacs’s performance Wednesday at the Paradise took great pleasure in noting, with Boston stuck in a deep winter chill. Such trivial matters didn’t bother reggae veteran Isaacs though. He soon [...]
Sweet soca for the road It has been a memorable Carnival, I find, and what made it so was the finest of the music. Mark down 2006 as the year in which soca road music finally emerged at the hands of a new, more or less, generation of soca singers either as individuals or in [...]