Sisterhood in the sun
Judy Mowatt may have been one of Bob Marley’s back-up singers, but her voice has always placed her front and centre. Alongside Rita Marley and Marcia Griffiths, Mowatt was one of the I-Threes, but her work started before Marley and has continued to this day. The first woman to have been nominated for a reggae Grammy, Mowatt has been singing her entire life, ever since she accompanied her mother’s organ playing at church as a child. She worked with Jamaica’s best-known female producer, the late Sonia Pottinger—a woman Mowatt considers a mother figure—and has made sure, through her work in reggae and now gospel, that Jamaican music maintains a female perspective. In recent years, she has converted to Christianity and now sings gospel music. Mowatt spoke to the Mirror from her home in Kingston, and talked about women in Jamaican music and her movement from reggae to gospel.