Studio bands fall apart Up until late 1984 when a young man named Noel Davy got very excited about a pre-programmed song he had found on a small Casio keyboard, it was actually musicians and not a glorified programmer who created the music for singers and deejays in Jamaican studios.
Billboard a moving target It was once said that local songs were unable to achieve much crossover success because international audiences found it hard to understand Jamaican dialect. Still, artistes such as Shaggy, JC Lodge, Sean Paul, Shabba Ranks and Super Cat have all had hits on the Billboard Hot 100 Charts, the main indicator [...]
Reggae icon, Joseph Hill, dies Joseph Hill, lead vocalist of reggae group Culture, collapsed after doing a show in Germany yesterday morning. He was 57. His daughter, Andrea Hill, said he died from a liver failure. She described him as a “well rounded, well known and well loved” individual. Mr. Hill’s last performance in Jamaica [...]
Hidden treasure Jennifer Barrett serves warning One of the paradoxes of Jamaican music at this time, in that while she is steadily creating a name for herself on the European circuit, on the home front, very little is known of her. Having honed her vocal ability while touring with the internationally famous Wailers Band, Jennifer [...]
Busy Signal Steps Out in a big way Nearly two years after his explosive single Step Out was released, dancehall toaster Busy Signal emerges with a focused album, also titled Step Out. The album doesn’t sacrifice Busy’s intensity as a deejay. It, however, sharpens his street credibility as a ‘voice’ for the ghetto youths.
Splicing Wars – Selectors cut and paste, artistes fume Local sounds are faking artistes’ voices and selling the dubs for their own benefit. The practise of cutting and dubbing another person’s voice over a recording done by an artiste is called splicing and according to some artistes, this is a big problem often worthy of [...]
Turbulence’s Silly Girl creating waves Silly Girl, the first single off Turbulence’s new album Ex-Girlfriend (Tads Records), has been creating quite a buzz. According to Turbulence, the song, which is currently making strides on the charts, wasn’t directed towards his former lover, singer Sasha. “Silly Girl is my favourite song on the album. People say [...]
Reggae rebelution: For Jamaican singer-songwriter Tanya Stephens, politics is only half the battle Tanya Stephens has already been a dancehall diva and a Swedish rock star. So on her extraordinary sixth album, the Jamaican singer-songwriter went for broke. Wearing a red beret and combat fatigues and singing movingly with the kind of sweeping vision that [...]
DVD Review: Classic Albums – Bob Marley And The Wailers, Catch A Fire Early on in their relationship, someone asked Bob Marley if Island Records owner Chris Blackwell was his producer. Bob said “No Mon, he’s my translator”. While that was a good joke, because of Bob’s heavy accent, Bob might have been more accurate [...]
Singer, minister, now Dr Carlene Davis Carlene Davis has been dialling in quite a few numbers in recent years. Apart from the 15 secular albums she produced between 1980 and 1994, she has been racking, up a few gospel albums, to date, six and counting. The figures do not stop there, as Davis recently completed [...]