Reggae In Germany? No Problem! Mention reggae music, and it’s safe to assume those within earshot will not immediately think of Germany. Jamaica? Sure. Africa? Maybe. But Germany? The land many Americans associate with lederhosen and precision automotive engineering? Please. So here’s a surprise for you: There’s reggae coming out of Deutschland. And here’s another: [...]

Rebel music: Jamaican artist is jammin’ A dozen tracks into her brilliant new album, Tanya Stephens gets deep. After a little girl-power boasting, some sexy love songs, and a couple should-be-classic drinking ditties, the Jamaican singer and toaster takes on the church. On You Keep Looking Up, Stephens sets out the ”chronicles according to Tanya” [...]

Away with Irie Maffia Irie, a patois term used by Rastafarians and Caribbeans to denote acceptance and positivism, is exactly what the ecstatic and vivid Irie Maffia radiate. Their reggae origins give definition to their music without limiting it. It is a little cumbersome to categorize Irie Maffia, due to the band’s colorful and multilayered [...]

Buju Banton aims for the feet as well as spirit Reggae music begat the dancehall style, but that doesn’t mean the relatives are especially close. Reggae, as Bob Marley, Burning Spear and the like conceived it, was music for the mind, concerned primarily with the messages of tolerance, resisting oppression, and devotion to God. Dancehall [...]

The story of Tami and Tessanne It’s almost eerie the way Tami and Tessanne Chin finish each other’s sentences. “We were in Little People together. we did everything together,” both girls said as they recounted some childhood memories. “We used to sing in the fan. that’s probably why we both have bad sinuses,” says older [...]

TOK wants nothing to do with Beenie Man International dancehall group TOK says they will no longer support anything that has to do with Beenie Man, as the doc has disrespected them on more than one occasion. The latest issue came about when Beenie Man failed to show up for ‘Bounce’, a stage show that [...]

Sounding a Mosaic by Bedouin Soundclash Sure, the Canadian band Bedouin Soundclash blends a myriad of different sounds and styles, but it doesn’t “clash” in the way that the band’s influences do, such as WashingtonD.C. veterans Bad Brains. Unlike Bedouin Soundclash, Bad Brains forces reggae into its aggressive punk, using reggae songs with refreshing breaks [...]

Rita Marley uses Tutu’s name in vain Rita Marley, the widow of late reggae musician Bob Marley, has been falsely using the name of Archbishop Desmond Tutu to garner publicity for a series of concerts she hopes to hold in the country early next year to commemorate the birth of her husband. The Africa Unite [...]

Remembering Peter Tosh Fourteen years before the devastation in New York City, Jamaica, and indeed the world, suffered a loss, though clearly not of the same magnitude, when reggae revolutionary Peter Tosh was brutally murdered at his home in Barbican, Kingston by gunmen. Also killed on that fateful night, was Wilton ‘Doc’ Brown, a herbalist [...]

Dancehall, the business edition As the clampdown on expletives at stage shows continues, a long whispered argument has come to the fore, that when sponsors from ‘uptown’ came with the money, the music, which was originally the ‘downtown’ lifeline was never the same again. There were new rules for an old game.