Tobagonian makes soca debut

Grenada’s reigning Soca Monarch and Road March King, Mr Killa (Hollice Mapp) is in the finals of next week’s Bmobile Blackberry International Soca Monarch competition. On Fantastic Friday at the Queen’s Park Oval, Mr Killa will perform “Swing It Away”, a song which took Grenada by storm last year. The soca star is hoping to create history for Grenada by winning the title.

The last time Mr Killa, who has won the Soca Monarch in Grenada three times, last appeared in the International Soca Monarch competition in 2005, he placed fifth with “Wine If Yuh Wining”.

Hip Hop’s Damon Dash makes the Judgement Yard sojourn

It was early last week that Sizzla Kalonji received the call that hip hop mogul Damon Dash was in the island and needed to make that link. “Naturally, I opened up my house to him,” the Rastafarian artiste told Splash, in reference to his August Town-based studio/house, known as Judgement Yard.

“I have invited Damon to come to Jamaica on several occasions… I told him he should think of buying houses here, do some kind of investment in the island. After all, this is Jamaica and we are about music and playing our part in helping out the suffering people in our community…”

Review: The Biggest Ragga Dancehall Anthems 2009

The best thing about the yearly Biggest Ragga Dancehall Anthems compilations– whose title provides you with all the backstory you need on this venerable series collecting 12 months of gems from Jamaica’s premier pop genre– is that they’re consistent enough to act as comforting listening but restlessly inventive enough to surprise you each time out. The consistency runs deep, right down to the jagged-but-dance-friendly rhythmic structure of the music (for a genre as open to outside influence as any in the world, a dancehall tune is recognizable in seconds). It’s there in everything from vocals that rub the near-parodically masculine against a sugary sweetness to themes that explore with the tension between the need to do bad and the urge to do right.

Gateways to Geekery: Dub

Though it isn’t precisely the first kind of music that involves what we now refer to as the remix, dub was arguably the first popular and influential art form to be predicated on creating entirely new music from already-existing recorded elements. Starting in the mid-’60s, Jamaican DJs began rocking dancehalls by creating, or dubbing, stripped-down versions of reggae songs (sometimes big hits, but more often obscure B-sides) that removed almost everything but the bedrock “riddim” of the bass and drums. Gateways To GeekeryBlasting these records over complex, high-powered sound systems, they invited local “toasters,” or MCs, to deliver their own interpretations of the lyrics, usually repetitive call-and-response vocals that kept the crowd happily moving.

Orlando Octave taking it higher

In 2008, he gave women of a darker hue a reason to smile. Darkie, an infectious reggae tune, sang the praises of women blessed with richer skin tones. It was a major hit and catapulted Orlando Octave, aka D Original Rudeboy, into the local spotlight. In 2009, he followed up with the R&B single Disconnected and the soca track Bruck Out An Roll, both of which blazed the airwaves, receiving commendable reviews.