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Text by Harry Hawks
Date Updated: May 1, 2020 |
Sugar Minott’s honesty shone through in everything that he ever did and his untimely death has sent shock waves throughout the reggae world. |
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Text by Harry Hawks
Date Updated: Apr 17, 2020 |
Alton Ellis was, beyond any doubt, Jamaica’s most soulful singer ever and his influence on the development of Jamaican music through his matchless singing and song-writing is profound. |
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Text by Harry Hawks
Date Updated: Apr 3, 2020 |
The ‘Crown Prince Of Reggae’, Dennis Emanuel Brown, was Jamaican music’s most consistently popular performer. Many artists achieve fame and adulation after their death but Dennis Brown earned an unparalleled amount of love and devotion during his life time. |
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Text by Harry Hawks
Date Updated: Mar 27, 2020 |
“Leonard Dillon, who was in effect The Ethiopians, remains one of the unsung heroes of Jamaican music…” Steve Barrow & Peter Dalton |
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Text by Harry Hawks
Date Updated: Feb 28, 2020 |
A key player with The Skatalites whose beautiful saxophone can be heard on countless recordings… his work as a musical arranger and builder of the ‘Sound Of Young Jamaica’ is every bit as important but is often overlooked. |
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Text by Jeremy Collingwood
Date Updated: Feb 21, 2020 |
The ‘Cool Ruler’ ran things for much of the late 1970’s delivering fine Loverman songs and equally impressive Reality & Rasta Tunes. Today he is the great survivor who is loved for his fierce independence. |
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Text by Harry Hawks
Date Updated: Feb 14, 2020 |
“…The music of Augustus Pablo, created for its moment, and somehow, eternally right for each moment since.” Ian McCann |
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Text by Harry Hawks
Date Updated: Jan 24, 2020 |
The most revered and respected of Jamaica’s roots vocal groups whose transcendental, ethereal harmonies are beautiful beyond compare; their debut single ‘Satta A Masa Gana’ from 1969 is one of the most versioned songs and rhythms in the history of reggae music and is now a Rastafarian hymn. |
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Text by Harry Hawks
Date Updated: Jan 17, 2020 |
One of the leading deejays and record producers during the seventies the work of Pat Francis aka Jah Lloyd aka Jah Lion is still sadly under appreciated… |
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Text by Jeremy Collingwood
Date Updated: Jan 10, 2020 |
Bob stands uniquely as the only person to be born into Poverty, on a small colonially owned Island and to become a major international Music star and an international celebrity. He bought the voice and beliefs of an exploited and subjugated race and class onto a world wide stage. |
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Text by Harry Hawks
Date Updated: Dec 13, 2019 |
Also known as Junior Soul and Junior Mervin an under-recorded singer whose indubitable, indisputably classic song ‘Police & Thieves’ transcended its origins in downtown Kingston’s internecine political violence to become a worldwide anthem for the fight against oppression both from below and from those at the very top. |
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Text by Harry Hawks
Date Updated: Dec 6, 2019 |
“One of the true heroes of Jamaican roots music…” Steve Barrow |
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Text by Harry Hawks
Date Updated: Nov 22, 2019 |
One of Jamaican music’s most distinctive, original and prolific singer/song writers responsible for inspiring an entire style of reggae singing. |
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Text by Harry Hawks
Date Updated: Nov 1, 2019 |
Ranking Joe, one of Jamaica’s most entertaining deejays, has enjoyed a career which has been as long as it has been illustrious.
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Text by Harry Hawks
Date Updated: Oct 25, 2019 |
Ken Boothe, “one of the quintessential Jamaican soul voices”, possesses the unerring ability to impart heartfelt emotion to even the most innocent, innocuous songs… |
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Text by Harry Hawks
Date Updated: Oct 4, 2019 |
A disciple of the nineties ‘Rasta Renaissance’ whose eight years behind bars served to strengthen his resolve to record righteous reality music… |
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Text by Harry Hawks
Date Updated: Sep 27, 2019 |
One of the first Jamaican record producers to enjoy overseas hits Harry J went on to make the most of his international connections. His state of the art recording complex on Roosevelt Avenue was the studio of choice throughout the seventies for the musicians and artists who followed his lead in taking reggae music out of Kingston’s ghettos and onto the worldwide stage. |
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Text by Harry Hawks
Date Updated: Sep 20, 2019 |
These ‘one hit wonders’ from way back when are actually Bob Andy and Marcia Griffiths: two giants of Jamaican music whose work is inextricably entwined with the development of reggae music and whose innumerable hits stretch from the sixties up to the present day. |
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Text by Harry Hawks
Date Updated: Sep 13, 2019 |
Although his bass guitar beat at the heart of reggae music for over twenty years Boris Gardiner still remains a relatively unknown figure although he has contributed much more to the music than many other far more celebrated performers. |
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Text by Harry Hawks
Date Updated: Sep 6, 2019 |
Not only an internationally acclaimed jazz guitarist Ernest Ranglin is also another of the architects and builders of modern Jamaican music. |
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