Buju Banton guilty on three counts Jamaica’s reggae superstar Buju Banton, real name Mark Myrie, has been found guilty of three cocaine related charges. A 12 member jury a short while ago delivered the verdict in the Sam M Gibbons building in Tampa which houses the United States Middle District Court, Florida Division. Buju was [...]
Beth Lesser’s unique book, Dancehall, covers the scantily-documented lives, fashion choices and hang outs of Jamaican Dancehall stars in the 1980s. The book is unique, in that it has the largesse to follow the careers of obscure yet worthy artists, who in some cases made little imprint outside Jamaica, and in others examples [as is [...]
About four years ago, the Jamaican label Greensleeves released a double-disc greatest-hits set called From Dubplate to Download: The Best of Greensleeves Records. The label’s been releasing music for decades now, and listening to the set felt like taking a crash course in 30 years of Jamaican anthems, from the the Wailing Souls’ slow, organic [...]
‘Like A Lion’ roars on to airwaves Reggae artiste Cali P’s latest song, Like A Lion, has been creating waves since its release. The song’s greatest endorsement thus far is being used as the soundtrack for a documentary feature film of the same name about seven-time ESPN X-Games gold medallist, Tanner Hall.
Middle Class Dub. So much music, so little time. Here is a mixture of UK and Jamaican tunes that gathers together some of the threads that make up what is, for us, ‘Middle Class Dub’. Shocks ’71 – Charlie Ace Charlie Ace ran Swing A Ling, a mobile record shop and label that toured the [...]
Julian Marley says reggae is big, but we’re treated small One of the more reserved, soft-spoken members of the Marley clan, briefly stepped out of his comfort zone a few days ago, to voice deep concern over the direction in which certain players have taken Reggae music. According to Julian Marley, efforts of some people [...]
The rocksteady rise of Rastaman vibrations It is a genre that has inspired decades of music, and yet British reggae is too often overlooked. A new documentary from BBC4, Reggae Britannia, seeks to put that right, as it takes us through the influence of Jamaican music on British culture from the early 1960s to the [...]
DJ Sep DJ Sep, whose birth name is Sep Ghadishah, is the founder of Dub Mission, a Sunday mainstay at Elbo Room. She says she fell in love with Dub while DJing at KUSF and later decided to start this dub dance night. She has continued to work in radio, as the host of “Off [...]
The Business of Bob Marley In late 1979, a mustachioed “60 Minutes” correspondent named George Negus asked Bob Marley if he was a rich man. “When you say ‘rich,’ what you mean?” the reggae superstar replied with a poker face. Do you have a lot of possessions? Lots of money in the bank?
No one watching Sasha on stage with Turbulance performing Natty Pon The Frontline would guess that inside she was deeply dissatisfied with the direction her life was going. The girl who grew up in a Christian home, mastered the art of hiding her true feelings, put her reservations aside and went to make one hit [...]