I listen to music a lot, I wouldn’t say all the time but pretty regularly. As I cleaning up around the house yesterday, I let iTunes DJ set the mood. At first, the music was jazzy and breezy, then it took a sharp turn into old school reggae with a Ken Boothe song, Everything I Own that took me back, way back. I stopped what I was doing and listened. You...

I was out walking one morning and heard this song as a car cruised by. Right away, it took me back to a time of simplicity and innocence. It was planted in my head and I hummed it all day. I wasn’t old enough to dance to it but I’m sure the adults around me did. The song is a Prince Buster number called Wash, Wash. I’m including  two versions: the live one,...

Byron Lee, founder of the group Byron Lee and the Dragonaires passed away in 2008 but his band, originally Byron Lee and the Dragonaires, renamed Byron Lee’s Dragonaires, continues to entertain. The band has more than 30 albums to their credit. “From my mother, who was of African descent, I received the soul, rhythm and love of music and from my father, who was Chinese, I received my shrewd business...

Freddie McGregor, aka Big Ship, is one of those reggae musicians who, although he’s been in the business since the 1960s, has remained relevant. Whether its ska, lovers rock, reggae, Roots reggae, dancehall or dub, Freddie’s done it. This versatility and his solid showmanship have earned him a loyal following both in Jamaica and internationally. Freddie McGregor was born in Clarendon in June, 1956. In 1963, he and two other...

Jamaican tenor saxophonist, Rolando Alphonso, was born on January 12, 1931 in Havana, Cuba.  He was brought to Jamaica by his mother when he was two years old. In Jamaica, Alphonso learned to play the saxophone and worked as a studio musician, backing performers such as Jimmy Cliff, the Wailers, the Maytals and most of the other leading performers of the 1960s. Alphonso also worked for two of the most...

I’ve been a fan of Burning Spear (the Spear) since high school. It was the height of the Black Power Movement in the U.S., a movement that had spread to the Caribbean and expressed itself in a growing consciousness and pride in our Africanness. The Spear’s third album, Marcus Garvey, became an anthem, an indictment of the times. Marcus Garvey words come to pass, Burning Spear sang and we cheered. It was one...

Last night, I heard the shocking news: Whitney Houston had died. I sat in total disbelief, glued to the television set, watching as the news scrolled across the ticker. Even after I saw the word was, as in Whitney Houston was….it didn’t feel real. No, Whitney Houston can’t be dead. But she was. In the footage that played over and over, she looked vibrant, alive. Nothing in these images predicted this...

I saw Etana in concert a few years ago in Jamaica. About a year or so before I did, I had heard about a young singer who had given up a recording contract in the States to return to Jamaica to devote herself to the music she wanted to sing and to do it her own way. I was impressed and when I heard she was to perform at the...

Marcia Griffiths was born in Kingston in 1949. She started singing professionally in 1964 but became an international sensation in 1989 when a deejay in Washington, DC began playing a little song she recorded seven years earlier. The Electric Boogie, with its infectious, feel-good rhythms, spawned a new line dance, the Electric Slide, which still draws young and old to dance floors at weddings, family reunions and parties. It was...

This week, we received news that Grammy award winning singer, Etta James, had passed away five days before her 74th birthday. I was ‘introduced’ to Ms. James when I was a student at university. Back then, as I’ve written in previous posts, my friends and I would share the music of our favorite artists. Etta James was one of my friend’s. Born Jamesetta Hawkins in Los Angeles in 1938, Etta James...