Jamelody chooses reggae over soca Trinidad is known mostly for soca music, but this is not the route along which Jamelody wanted to make his musical trod. Instead, it is reggae. Jamelody, whose real name is Michael Williams, is from Port of Spain, Trinidad. He said he was hardly exposed to carnival and soca music.
What’s Ianspotting? Good Question Somewhere out there is a guy named Ian who probably doesn’t know he inspired the naming of the latest of Kingston’s sterling bands. Ianspotting is the brainchild of Shaun Weima, who also played in the popular local bands Reno’s Hitmen and Mystic Caravan.
A Hasidic State of Mind There’s a strong push within mainstream music to categorize recording artists and stick them in a box. Case in point — take a look at New York-based reggae chanter Matisyahu, and he seems easy enough to classify. With a big religious beard, Hasidic attire, and pale skin, the fact that [...]
Beenie’s biographer places book in class context When radio personality Empress, host of Tuesday night’s launch of the book, Who Am? The Untold Story of Beenie Man, started the official proceedings, she emphasised that “it is a Jamaican story, written by a Jamaican and published by a Jamaican company”. And when the book’s author, Milton [...]
Music royalties warning at UWI Musician and lecturer Michael ‘Ibo’ Cooper noted on Tuesday at the University of the West Indies (UWI) that in Latin ‘reggae’ means ‘of the King’. However, the royal matters that concerned some of the panellists at the International Reggae Day Symposium were those of the directly financial kind.
Concert Review: Matisyahu Seeing a man dressed in traditional attire for a Hassidic Jew performing on stage at a reggae concert may make some people wonder what’s going on. At least those who are unfamiliar with Matisyahu—the Hasidic hip hop and reggae artist known for beat boxing, and rapping along with a high energy, improvisational [...]
Dancehall dream team makes ‘Anything For You’ It was the mid-1990s. In only 1985 the Sleng Teng rhythm had transformed Jamaican music in general and dancehall in particular, ushering in the era of multiple artistes on one rhythm launched from a computerised base (‘digital music’ it was called), that itself developing into the distinctive ‘boop [...]
More fire – let the reggae festivals commence I had the pleasure of travelling to Jamaica recently for the media launch of Italy’s renowned reggae festival, Rototom Sunsplash. With the annual event now in its 15th year, the organisers of the festival – which takes place from July 3 to 12 – marked the milestone [...]
Lee (Scratch) Perry is still happy to be making music I expected Lee (Scratch) Perry to be a little crazy. But it surprised me that he was also kind of sane, or at least able to keep up his end of a conversation – a conversation that touched on demons, sinners, vibrations good and bad, [...]
Shaggy hits major European pop music charts with Feel the Rush International recording artiste Shaggy is number one on the pop music charts in Germany. His Uefa theme song Feel the Rush soared to number one knocking Love Is You by Thomas Godo from the top spot. Shaggy recently picked up a gold plaque in [...]