Sly and Robbie interview: Sly and Rabbie
Sly and Robbie interview: Sly and Rabbie
Sly Dunbar, one half of the legendary Riddim Twins, Sly and Robbie, is singing ‘Auld Lang Syne’ to me.
I’ve asked him what he makes of Robert Burns, considering the duo are heading to Glasgow to headline a Jamaican Burns Night at Celtic Connections. The idea behind the evening is to explore, through music and West Indian grub, what might have been had Burns gone to Jamaica, as he had planned to, in 1786 to work as a bookkeeper on a sugar plantation. The success of the Kilmarnock Edition of his poems kept him from setting sail from Greenock, but it’s a difficult, morally complex part of the bard’s history that has only been discussed in recent years.