Published:Wednesday | September 9, 2015 | 1:45 PMMel Cooke
Tomorrow is yet another anniversary of 11/9 (the month and day out in the order to which I am accustomed, not because the English of our major colonisers is superior to America's, but because the date has significance outside of the Trade Centre...
Published:Friday | August 28, 2015 | 12:00 AMMel Cooke
The flooring is steady and the lighting adequate inside the Old Harbour Bay Fisherman Co-op building in the seaside St Catherine community. Boat captain Cyril 'Mackerel' Campbell is calm as he goes back 22 years and 18 nautical miles offshore to the shifting, treacherous surface of the deep waters on a gloomy May night...
Published:Friday | September 4, 2015 | 11:02 AMMel Cooke
"Every generation throws a hero up the pop charts," Paul Simon sang in The Boy in the Bubble. While the numerous charts in Jamaica are notoriously flawed - as in lacking any shred of authenticity - the cycle of popular entertainers remains an...
Published:Wednesday | September 2, 2015 | 12:00 AMMel Cooke
Of the numerous outstanding moments for Jamaica in the IAAF World Championships in China, two were especially stirring. In the order in which they happened, there was O'Dayne Richards' bronze medal in the shot put and Novlene Williams-Mills' final...
Published:Tuesday | September 1, 2015 | 12:00 AMMel Cooke
Yesterday morning, the voices of Winsome Benjamin and Phillip Frazer were among those in studio at KOOL FM, Braemar Avenue, New Kingston.While there is nothing remarkable about performers' voices in a radio station, it is noteworthy that the two...
Published:Friday | August 28, 2015 | 12:00 AMMel Cooke
Today, Automotives continues its series about the achievements of the persons after whom some of the country's roads are named. In this season of world-class track and field, we began last week with Herb McKenley Drive and now move on to a road with...
Published:Friday | August 28, 2015 | 12:00 AMMel Cooke
There have been many chuckles and imitations of Justin Gatlin's break from form at the track and field World Championships in Beijing, China, at the end of the 100m and 200m sprints. With a hand coming up and over his shoulder as Gatlin follows...
Published:Thursday | August 27, 2015 | 3:13 PMMel Cooke
Numbers are notoriously hard to come by in Jamaican popular music - not that the avoidance of public accounting is specific to music related to the land of wood and water, but when the unstructured nature of the business is combined with a general...
Published:Friday | August 21, 2015 | 12:00 AMMel Cooke
The saying 'free paper bun', is especially popular at this time of year as the long summer holiday period draws to a close and preparations for the new academic year peak. The figurative burning of the 'free paper' (certification of manumission in...
Published:Wednesday | August 19, 2015 | 12:00 AMMel Cooke
I would hope that my stance on Jamaican beauty competitions has been somewhat established, although there is a whiff of arrogance to my believing that anything I have written on the matter is significant enough to be remembered. If it has been, a...
Published:Tuesday | August 18, 2015 | 12:00 AMMel Cooke
Tanto Metro and Devonte are approaching 20 years as an official duo after solidifying their musical bond with the Billboard-charting Everyone Falls in Love, recorded in 1997. It was also the name of their first album, done for Donovan Germain's...
Published:Friday | August 14, 2015 | 12:00 AMMel Cooke
Everyone Falls in Love literally made the duo Tanto Metro and Devonte the 1997 Billboard-charting single, solidifying a bond of friendship which had made the Penthouse Records single possible in the first place. After that success, they have been a...
Published:Wednesday | August 12, 2015 | 12:00 AMMel Cooke
THERE IS a very cruel, cynical saying among some of those who bring children into the world with no intention of providing for them financially (which means that these parents have no plans of taking care of their offspring's emotional or any other...
Published:Tuesday | August 11, 2015 | 12:00 AMMel Cooke
The microphone man for Japanese sound system Barrier Free, one of the overseas guests on Saturday night's Jamaica Sound System Festival at Grizzly's Plantation Cove, Priory, St Ann, made full use of his heavily accented English-Jamaican in engaging...
Published:Monday | August 10, 2015 | 4:10 PMMel Cooke
Unlike the slew of new Vybz Kartel songs since his 2011 arrest and eventual life sentence for murder in 2014, as well as the recordings singer Jah Cure made while serving eight years on firearm and rape charges, there has not been striking Buju...
Published:Friday | August 7, 2015 | 10:09 AMMel Cooke
When there is a strong connection between audience and live performer, the atmosphere figuratively crackles with electricity. The strength of the bond created by music varies with the stature of the artiste on stage, as well as the overall mood of...
Published:Wednesday | August 5, 2015 | 12:05 PMMel Cooke
I once heard Herbie Miller, curator of the Jamaica Music Museum in the Institute of Jamaica, give an impassioned, caustic take on what he has observed about longevity in Jamaican popular music. His last four words, said from the floor in a public...
Published:Tuesday | August 4, 2015 | 11:45 AMMel Cooke
There were many words about the awardees at Saturday's Tribute to the Greats 18, held at the Chinese Benevolent Association, Hope Road, St Andrew. As moving as the citations, read by Norma Brown, were, it was the musical tributes - including...
Published:Monday | August 3, 2015 | 12:55 PMMel Cooke
Each citation at Tribute to the Greats 18, held at the Chinese Benevolent Association, Hope Road, St Andrew, on Saturday night was a compressed tale of the life of someone who has contributed to Jamaican popular music. Apart from what was written...
Published:Friday | July 31, 2015 | 10:21 AMMel Cooke
While there is a distinct pleasure in reading poetry, there is also the joy of hearing the writer read his or her work. Often during a reading, the poem is given a context within the writer's personal experiences or the general social circumstances...
Published:Friday | July 31, 2015 | 5:57 PMMel Cooke
Before getting into the tale of the new Toyota Noah, there is one difference from the images which needs to be noted - those light-coloured seats are covered in black by the company at the purchaser's discretion. If my tastes, dubious as they are,...
Published:Friday | July 31, 2015 | 12:00 AMMel Cooke
Howard Foster, sales and marketing manager at Toyota Jamaica, smiles as he says "finally", emphasising the sense of achievement in getting the Noah into the Jamaican market, something the Jamaican arm of the Japanese car maker had been pressing for...
Published:Friday | July 31, 2015 | 12:00 AMMel Cooke
With a number of current songs and riddims going back to the 1990s, deejays Beenie Man and Louie Culture are among those who have been honoured with covers of their songs by the next generation of performers.For Louie Culture, it is Nesbeth who has...
Published:Wednesday | July 29, 2015 | 12:00 AMMel Cooke
Just in case anyone who read last week's column on my writing about entertainment in Jamaica for 15 years thought it was a brag or statement of outstanding achievement, I consider myself a mere lad, a stripling, a babe in swaddling clothes, in the...
Published:Friday | July 24, 2015 | 12:00 AMMel Cooke
UNTOLD STORIES is a standout song on Buju Banton’s ’Til Shiloh album, which was released in July 1995, this month marking its 20th anniversary. Guitar and gruff deejay vocals combine to create a song which not only lasted, but has become an inconcert singalong down to the last repeated “the full has never been told”....
