Published:Friday | January 11, 2019 | 12:00 AMMelville Cooke
"Lots of people keep on skanking while the prophecy fulfillingEntertainment is a form of enjoymentNo bother fight inna de danceWe come fe enjoy weselfWhile the music playingAnd me idren skankingMe sistren dancinIf me see a man, a dance with me...
Published:Friday | January 4, 2019 | 12:00 AMMelville Cooke
In March 2018, while in Germany on his Black Gold tour (named after his debut album, released in mid-2017), singer Samory-I was called on stage yet again. Although the band was in place, the introduction was not done with a professional MC's...
Published:Friday | December 28, 2018 | 12:00 AMMelville Cooke
Monte Blake chuckles as he recalls American singer Margie Joseph coming to Jamaica and not remembering much of her song Words (Are Impossible). Joseph originally did the track as an R...
Published:Friday | December 7, 2018 | 12:00 AMMelville Cooke
On Thursday, November 29, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) added reggae music to its list of intangible cultural heritage that deserve protection and promotion. It was five decades after The Maytals...
Published:Friday | June 15, 2018 | 12:00 AMMelville Cooke
The Mighty Diamonds and Musical Youth both sang about pot but neither used the word in the titles of their hit songs. In Jamaica, The Mighty Diamonds made Pass the Kouchie a marijuana (also called pot) anthem which starts their 1982 album Changes....
A 14-year-old Errol Dunkley first heard his recording of You're Gonna Need Me/Please Stop Your Lying Girl on radio on a Saturday night. The next day, he put on his only pair of shoes, as usual, to go with his Sunday best.When the school week of that...
There is an eagerness in Errol Dunkley's voice and eyes as he drives with The Sunday Gleaner into west Kingston, pointing out places that now exist only in his memory (like the hotel where a scene with Jimmy Cliff taking on the police in The Harder...
Published:Tuesday | December 19, 2017 | 12:00 AMMelville Cooke
Singer Tarrus Riley does not even crack a smile when he responds to The Gleaner's query about the line-up for tomorrow's ninth consecutive staging of the free concert he hosts at Emancipation Park, New Kingston."I have spoken to Tarrus Riley and he...
Published:Monday | October 30, 2017 | 12:00 AMMelville Cooke
On Friday night at the Talk of the Town Restaurant at Jamaica Pegasus hotel, New Kingston, high above the damp city streets, The Jamaica National (JN) Group presented its first corporate branding campaign.One of the group's more prominent...
Published:Friday | June 23, 2017 | 12:00 AMMelville Cooke
Cham's Lawless set has made the Billboard Reggae Chart for the week ending July 1, 2017. It is at number seven, a place below Morgan Heritage's Avrakedabra, which has moves up two places from last week's number six slot.Cham's set features Get Drunk...
Published:Friday | May 19, 2017 | 12:00 AMMelville Cooke
LAST PERFORMANCES - Frankie Paul's final major Jamaican performance: Startime, Mas Camp, National Stadium, January 9, 2016. Organiser of the vintage music series, Michael Barnett, said it was "mind-blowing". At a concert where...
In 2013, the year before the event was moved to Grizly's Plantation Cove and grew into the Jamaica Sound System Festival, the then Bass Odyssey anniversary event was held in Runaway Bay. St Ann. Yaniq Walford of Bass Odyssey estimates that event...
Published:Wednesday | May 3, 2017 | 12:00 AMMelville Cooke
Before the song, No Violence in Love, in February, there was the public service advertisement with that title, spearheaded by Donovan Watkis and Debbie Bissoon. Timed to coincide with Valentine's Day 2017, it featured 21 well-known personalities...
Published:Tuesday | February 21, 2017 | 12:00 AMMelville Cooke
The attention Lloyd Parkes' album Time A Go Dread is getting, is stirring thoughts of expanding his band's role.Renowned as a backing band, especially touring with the late Dennis Brown, and supporting performers on the long-running Startime series...
Published:Wednesday | November 30, 2016 | 12:00 AMMelville Cooke
It is that time of the year again, when Christmas carols are on the radio, coming from the choirs and the audio systems in the supermarkets, urging observance of the birth of Jesus Christ, spending and consumption of wine, sorrel, cake and song in...
Published:Tuesday | September 20, 2016 | 12:00 AMMelville Cooke
A few years ago, I was walking from the Kingston Public Hospital (KPH) to The Gleaner Company when, at the corner of North and Orange streets, I saw a boy being verbally brutalised by a woman.It has stayed with me for a...
Published:Tuesday | September 6, 2016 | 12:00 AMMelville Cooke
Sending your child back to school for 'September morning' is always an interesting experience for a parent or guardian - and that is not mentally engaging but in the curse usage, as in "may you live in interesting...
Published:Monday | August 29, 2016 | 12:00 AMMelville Cooke
On the night of The Great Blackout - Saturday, August 27, soon after power was restored along Molynes Road, in St Andrew, I had reason to be at an all-night tyre shop for an extended period. It is a fascinating place to...
Published:Friday | September 2, 2016 | 12:00 AMMelville Cooke
Stephen 'Ragga' Marley's Revelation Part II: The Fruit of Life is the highest placed album by a Jamaican on the Billboard Reggae Albums Chart for the week of September 10, 2016.He is two places above his brother Ziggy, whose self-titled set is at...
Published:Tuesday | August 23, 2016 | 12:00 AMMelville Cooke
So there I was at a stop light along Lady Musgrave Road in St Andrew, when a man rides up on a bicycle, a bulging sack balanced on the handlebars. I look across through the open passenger window, expecting anything...
Published:Monday | August 15, 2016 | 12:00 AMMelville Cooke
Those of us of a certain vintage, will remember a televised national family planning advertisement where a woman with quite a number of children in tow, and looking like another was 'in the oven', knocked on a door to ask for a...
Published:Monday | August 8, 2016 | 12:00 AMMelville Cooke
I saw behaviour cruder than oil in its most unrefined state about a week ago at the Texaco gas station near Cross Roads (you know, the one only a certified madman would try to rob, because police officers and security...
Published:Tuesday | August 2, 2016 | 12:00 AMMelville Cooke
So there I was at a supermarket in Liguanea last Tuesday night, getting my storm supplies. It was a swift operation and, heading to the cashier, I looked down at the trolley I was pushing, at what I going to pay for and nearly...
Published:Wednesday | August 3, 2016 | 3:08 PMMelville Cooke
Our Music, Our Festival, the tagline for the recent Reggae Sumfest 2016 in Montego Bay, St James, seems to have resonated with a number of the performers.I was, unfortunately, not able to be there, but courtesy of the high-quality video coverage,...
Published:Tuesday | July 26, 2016 | 12:00 AMMelville Cooke
Apart from those very rare (non-existent) instances in which a person's first romantic relationship ends up being the one that they stay in until their death (hopefully not at the hands of the person they are involved with), everybody who enters...
