Jamaica’s most powerful export I spent last week in St. Lucia. This week I am in Dominica. The first thing that always strikes me when I travel east is how much Jamaican culture has penetrated these islands: particularly our music – and Rastafarianism. Reggae music blasts from every bus and maxi-taxi, and there seem to [...]
Get Down, Moses – Upstart local Jewish musicians weave a coat of many colors The Maccabee warriors’ trouncing of synagogue-defiling Greeks (a victory, incidentally, that blew Jewish chances to trade patriarchy for paganism) pales next to the Savior’s birth. But Hanukkah offers its own charms and boost to the economy—eight days of presents and that [...]
Fat Freddy’s win BBC music award Wellington’s six-piece band Fat Freddy’s Drop has won a major BBC music award in London.
Patriotism strong at ‘Welcome To Jamrock’ When ‘The Gargamel’ Buju Banton gutturally crooned Our Father on the rhythm to Murderer at Cinema 2, New Kingston, on Saturday night, he was accompanied by his back-up singers plus thousands of ‘Gargalites’. Stone Love, with Geefus and Iceberg at the controls, delivered songs as diverse as Baby Cham’s [...]
Reid to rise in the east It has been quite a while since Junior ‘One Blood’ Reid has performed on a major show in Jamaica. However, Reid says this is not intentional, as show promoters have been giving him a ‘fight’, as in treating him unfairly. “A long time Junior Reid nuh work nuh real [...]
Publishers try to even score Jamaica’s music has long suffered from the lack of music scores. And the deficiency is even more striking when the much larger number of books which chronicle the development of Jamaican music is taken into consideration. A score is a copy of a musical composition in proper music notation so [...]
Baddis rhythm still hot the second time around It was eight years ago that producer Richard ‘Shams’ Browne, who was an in-house studio engineer at Main Street Records, scored big with the Baddis rhythm on his Hi-Profile label. The Baddis raced up the charts with multiple hits including Mr Vegas’ Jacket, Beenie Man’s Number One, [...]
An Irish Singer Performs a Show of Classic Reggae For a woman who tore up a photograph of Pope John Paul II on live television, Sinead O’Connor is downright devout. Her faith now is Rastafarianism, the Jamaican creed that brought righteousness to reggae. Ms. O’Connor’s latest album, “Throw Down Your Arms” (That’s Why There’s Chocolate [...]
Religion and reggae: A new star mixes it up It is a puzzling mix for a reggae concert crowd: alongside teenagers in rainbow-striped sweaters, baggy jeans, dreadlocks and Birkenstocks are young women dressed in modest long skirts and head scarves, and men in the black suits and black velvet kippahs that signify followers of ultra-Orthodox [...]
UB loving New Zealand They have been arguably the biggest reggae band on the planet for the past 25 years – now they are coming to Rotorua. The Daily Post’s MIKE MATHER chatted to Astro from UB40 about longevity, performing and his impressions of New Zealand. Does New Zealand have a UB40 capital?