Hundreds of music lovers packed Albee Square in Downtown Brooklyn to watch reggae band Meta and the Cornerstones perform on July 28. The band was the musical entertainment of Downtown Brooklyn Partnership’s pop-up beach party — a beach-themed outdoor event at the center of Fulton Mall. The event attracted coastline fanatics, music enthusiasts, and even [...]
Founded in 1968 by Lee Gopthal and Chris Blackwell, two Jamaican ex-pats living in London, Trojan helped introduce an array of reggae artists to mainstream audiences. The label’s catalog includes music from Lee "Scratch" Perry, Desmond Dekker, Jimmy Cliff, the Pioneers and the Maytalls, while its Upsetter imprint was responsible for releasing much of Bob [...]
Reggae was originated in Jamaica in the late 1960s. The first popular song to officially use the word "reggae" was "Do the Reggay", a 1968 single by Toots and the Maytals, thus giving the name to the genre and introducing it to a much wider global audience. As a matter of fact, the term reggae [...]
When you think reggae music, one city naturally comes to mind: Salt Lake City, Utah.No, seriously, it makes sense if you think about it, said Vaughn Carrick."It really kind of fits," said the 33-year-old founder of the Reggae Rise Up festival. "In lieu of the surfers, we have the snow and the snowboarders. Being outdoorsy [...]
Ibo Cooper said that he is longing for the day when Reggae Month will bring about the kind of buzz that could boost the country’s economy in a significant way."I’m dreaming of a Reggae Month where thousands of visitors flock the island to participate in the different activities, where every gas station run outta gas [...]
Most Americans might not be aware of him, but Jamaican producer Lee “Scratch” Perry may be the most influential musical artist alive. Whether it’s seen through the iconoclastic, no-fucks-given punk ethos of the Clash, the tripped-up, spaced-out sounds of the first Gorillaz record, or in the sonic adventurousness of electronic artists like the Orb – [...]
Walls of huge speakers delineate the outdoor dancefloor, the warmth of the air matched by the warmth of the bass: This is a Jamaican soundsystem dance. One of the best things to hear at one of these events is the powerful, smooth sound of Marcia Llyneth Griffiths’s voice floating over the rhythms. Hers is a [...]
Taiwan may not be the first place people think of when they think of reggae music, but the genre appears to be gaining popularity slowly and steadily across the island. The community of reggae music lovers may be small, but it is growing, and the island geography and laid-back atmosphere of Taiwan, which are reminiscent [...]
Ninjaman, dubbed as the Gold Teeth Don Gargan of dancehall, will not be celebrating a Merry Christmas in 2017.A seven-person jury found Desmond “Ninjaman” Ballentine; his son, Jahneil Ballentine, and a friend, Dennis Clayton, guilty of the murder of Ricardo Johnson, and they will be sentenced on December 15, 2017 more than likely to life [...]
The Harder They Come, Jamaica’s first (and still finest) home-grown film, was released in 1972 with the local singer Jimmy Cliff as the country boy Ivan Martin, who becomes a Robin Hood-like criminal outlaw amid the ganja-yards and urban alleys of the Jamaican capital of Kingston. The film’s director Perry Henzell, a ganja-smoking white Jamaican [...]