Mortimer delivers soulful set at Skyline

The Mortimer-hungry crowd willingly made the mid-week trek “up a Skyline” in Jack’s Hill to hear their favourite artiste deliver an intimate live acoustic set at The Listener’s Club, and it was a full house that savoured the 90 minutes of musical mastery from a singer whose ability is unquestioned.

Advertised for an 8 p.m. start, it was 9:03 p.m. when host Ashley Miller made her way to the stage and told patrons, “Make some noise if you are ready for Mortimer!”

They obeyed. And it seemed as if “make some noise” became some kind of unspoken mantra that morphed into constant screams of approval, not just for the music, but also for comments like, “My wife is in the house”.

“Tonight is very special to me … tonight we celebrate music with New Wave and Wray and Nephew. I love this kind of setting … very intimate … I love the big stage too, but this is my kind of thing,” shared Mortimer, who first of all thanked his fans for their unwavering support.

He then set the tone for a night of tried-and-tested favourites, new songs, not-so-new songs, and the backstory to some of his work. Mortimer was there to give of himself, starting with a few tracks from his début album, From Within, due out today (Friday)

From Within has certainly been a long time coming and the Rastafarian reggae singer was even able to poke fun at himself over the wait.

“Listen … you’ve been waiting?” he asked. “I have been waiting!” he said emphatically to much laughter.

Simply put, From Within is an album of self-exploration, or, in Mortimer’s words, “It’s about being human, figuring it out as we go along … questions … some answers, some things that we talk about, some things that we keep secret”.

He played track one, In My Time, featuring Damian Marley, which many seemed to know and followed it with Balcony Swing, which has a cutesy back story. It goes something like this: Having started working, he wanted to move out of his parents’ home, and he mentioned that he was looking for a place to a woman he met at work. He found a room in a big house on the hill, and on the balcony was a swing. The woman at work, who was single at the time, told him that she was glad that he found a place and also that she knew how lonely it could be the first night, so if he needed company, he should call. However, his landlord didn’t allow female visitors. But he called anyway. The balcony swing became their place of conversation after his visitor would throw up her overnight bag and climb up to avoid the eyes of the landlord. The happy ending is that the woman from work is now his wife. Fans went ballistic.

Part two of the concert saw Mortimer actually singing and even though at one point he reminded his fans jokingly to “sing di rest of the song dem to ... it come in like oonu only know Lightning”, they were many times when they were like his choir. The energy was high and Mortimer seemed to feed off it and into it.

In 2019, Mortimer was crowned Breakout Artiste of the Year by JaRIA and, based on votes, also won Song of the Year. Since then, he has released an EP and a number of singles that have been well-received by his ever-growing fan base. Songs such as Careful, Style & Grace, Slowly, and My Child – a song he wrote for himself and his “four kids who he loves dearly”– were among those that made a solid impact, often even earning a “pull up.”

At 10:26 p.m., the much-anticipated Lightning struck, creating the biggest ‘Instagrammable’ moment of the night. Phones were held aloft as everyone aimed to capture that electrifying instant.

The official music video for Lightning has amassed 25 million views since it was released in 2019. When the curtains came down at 10:34 p.m., the fans still wanted more, but there would be no encores. Event organisers, New Wave, a platform dedicated to helping to boost Jamaican culture, collaborated with Very Culture for this event, and Yannick Reid told The Gleaner that he and his team were “very pleased”.

“I would give it a 10 out of 10 because it’s a Wednesday ... it’s the middle of the week and it’s really very beautiful when we can draw out people from all walks of life to come and appreciate soulful reggae music. It just shows that people are still craving real music and they will go out in the middle of the week even though they have work tomorrow. We were taking a chance ... and it paid off. We had a full house, Mortimer was smiling throughout his whole set and people were singing along with him. I can’t ask for anything more than that,” Reid said.

yasmine.peru@gleanerjm.com