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.
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 band.
Matisyahu performed in Columbus, Ohio on July 1, to delight of an enthusiastic audience that swayed and danced until the very end of the show.
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 boop’ drum pattern with Bogle.
And a number of deejays emerged almost simultaneously, creating a generation that overlapped with, and then replaced, the stars of the late 1980s, among those relative ‘oldsters’ Shabba Ranks, Supercat, Cutty Ranks and Admiral Bailey.
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 by whisking a few journos off to Kingston to enjoy some pre-festival activities.
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, magic and, occasionally, music.
The pioneering dub-reggae producer has had a loose relationship with reality since before his infamous Black Ark backyard studio burned to the ground in 1983 (in a fire he claims to have set himself). That eccentricity drove him to create some of the most adventurous music in the history of Jamaican music, through the late ’60s and ’70s.
