‘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.
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 streets of Kingston Jamaica: what a great use of a Morris Minor. Strangely, there is little evidence of his current whereabouts but we hope he is nestled safely somewhere and not pushing up the dub daisies.
Sly and Robbie and the Revolutionaries
This band has produced more tracks than your iPod can consume in a lifetime so, instead of us attempting to pick one, just browse Spotify. (Not everyone knows, but our Sly is mixed race and his mum was very, very good friends with ‘Uncle’ Sly Dunbar. One day, the truth will be told.)
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 to place the music at a higher level, even in the face of a great need for injecting the country’s music and culture with new life and power, have been for too little.
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 late 1980s.
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 Beaten Path” on KPFA.
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 after another with songs such as I’m Still In Love With You, We’ve Got The Love, Don’t Wanna Be Alone among others.
There was no big revelation, no flashing lights, nothing dramatic… but Sasha knew it was time to stop the pretence and get back to the root.
Younger Marley wails for dad Bob
IT WAS a redemption song in more ways than one. While hip-hop superstar Mary J. Blige was Raggamuffin’s headline act, it was Ky-Mani Marley’s reunion with his dad’s band The Wailers that stole the show.
In front of more than 7000 fans at Parramatta Park, the second-youngest of Bob Marley’s 11 children strode to the stage for an afternoon jam alongside his dad’s band.
Downloading music illegally – A Jamaican pirate speaks
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INTERNET pirates including those in Jamaica couldn’t stop the six per cent rise in global digital music sales to US$4.6 billion ($395 billion) in 2010.
Vernon, a Jamaican musician and computer scientist, has over 10,000 illegal songs enough to continuously play for a month. He asked that his surname be withheld for legal considerations, but enjoys downloading rock and reggae.
These days, the stoned ski towns of Colorado just might be more receptive venues for reggae rhythms than the genre’s ancestral shores of Jamaica. A case in point is Fort Collins’ own dub purveyors, DubSkin, who stay true to reggae’s roots, selling out strings of shows in places like Crested Butte, Breckenridge and Winter Park with their Rastafarian-inspired message.
“People go to ski towns, and they party, and they live their lives to have fun and snowboard,” says drummer Cory Eberhard, who left the popular electronic act Pretty Lights last year, preferring the group feel of his reggae band. “It’s a change of pace. I like playing with a bunch of different musicians as opposed to playing with one other guy and a computer.”