Beenie’s biographer places book in class context When radio personality Empress, host of Tuesday night’s launch of the book, Who Am? The Untold Story of Beenie Man, started the official proceedings, she emphasised that “it is a Jamaican story, written by a Jamaican and published by a Jamaican company”. And when the book’s author, Milton [...]
Music royalties warning at UWI Musician and lecturer Michael ‘Ibo’ Cooper noted on Tuesday at the University of the West Indies (UWI) that in Latin ‘reggae’ means ‘of the King’. However, the royal matters that concerned some of the panellists at the International Reggae Day Symposium were those of the directly financial kind.
Concert Review: Matisyahu Seeing a man dressed in traditional attire for a Hassidic Jew performing on stage at a reggae concert may make some people wonder what’s going on. At least those who are unfamiliar with Matisyahu—the Hasidic hip hop and reggae artist known for beat boxing, and rapping along with a high energy, improvisational [...]
Dancehall dream team makes ‘Anything For You’ It was the mid-1990s. In only 1985 the Sleng Teng rhythm had transformed Jamaican music in general and dancehall in particular, ushering in the era of multiple artistes on one rhythm launched from a computerised base (‘digital music’ it was called), that itself developing into the distinctive ‘boop [...]
More fire – let the reggae festivals commence I had the pleasure of travelling to Jamaica recently for the media launch of Italy’s renowned reggae festival, Rototom Sunsplash. With the annual event now in its 15th year, the organisers of the festival – which takes place from July 3 to 12 – marked the milestone [...]
Lee (Scratch) Perry is still happy to be making music I expected Lee (Scratch) Perry to be a little crazy. But it surprised me that he was also kind of sane, or at least able to keep up his end of a conversation – a conversation that touched on demons, sinners, vibrations good and bad, [...]
Shaggy hits major European pop music charts with Feel the Rush International recording artiste Shaggy is number one on the pop music charts in Germany. His Uefa theme song Feel the Rush soared to number one knocking Love Is You by Thomas Godo from the top spot. Shaggy recently picked up a gold plaque in [...]
Rhythmic themes at Ward 21 Ward 21 has been offering a new rhythmic vibe as their rhythms have been attracting special themes. They, however, confess that these ‘theme rhythms’ were created simply by a vibe in the studio.
Five Reggae Albums You Cannot Live Without Great art knows no seasons. Nevertheless, some music is made for—or at least can be fully appreciated during—specific times of the year. Reggae music, which many people still believe means Bob Marley’s music, tends to get broken out only once the flip flops and hibachi grills come out [...]
Artistes deliver at night two of St. Kitts Music Festival Although the second night of the St. Kitts Music Festival appeared to have a much smaller crowd compared to past Reggae Nights of the event, the artistes that were scheduled to perform delivered the goods. Patrons, who did not take heed to the Festival Committee’s [...]