News & Updates — reggae

One of the most important Jamaican musical figures was the keyboardist/composer Jackie Mittoo. He was a child prodigy who learned piano at four years old, was leading popular club bands recording sessions for Studio One as a teenager. He became the label's Musical Director and was a founding member of The Skatalites, along with Tommy McCook (who shares a date of birth today). Very much influenced by soul music (such as Booker T & the MG's), he not only held down key roles in The Soul Vendors, Sound Dimension and The Soul Brothers, but he also made some funky records...

The great Cuban-born saxophonist Tommy McCook came out of the important Kingston JA-based Alpha Boys School (home to many great Jamaican musicians) and worked on a gazillion sessions of ska, reggae, jazz, rocksteady and soul, and was a founding (and long-time) member of The Skatalites (along with Jackie Mittoo--whose born day is also today). He was Musical Director for The Supersonics and cut a few sides under his own name, as well as the band backing singers like Alton Ellis, Justin Hinds and others. A lyrical tenor player, he cited John Coltrane as one of his biggest influences. Early on...

Our friends over at the always-tasteful Paris DJs have put up a downloadable mixtape of some of the grooviest nuggets of recent vintage for your listening pleasure. Yes, the Friends & Family Vol 1 set is your audio update on the dopest sounds of today. Their website has given coverage to so many great contemporary bands of the funk, reggae, soul, hip-hop, jazz and boogaloo scenes that it's like they want to do the work for you, keeping you up to date with the freshest arrivals. All of the tunes selected here are from late 2016 or 2017. They cover...

(Clive Chin, left and Bertram Brown, center. Photo by Malcolm Allen) Jamaican producer Bertram Brown was the man behind Freedom Sounds, founded in '75 and operating into the '90s, an important reggae label from the Greenwich Farm ghetto of Kingston. The imprint put out some great music of social concerns by Prince Alla, Rod Taylor, Phillip Fraser, Horace Andy, Ranking Dread, Michael Prophet, Earl Zero and many, many others, with a special regard for neighborhood talents and singers not part of the island's mainstream. These rootsy 45s usually were with the backing of the Soul Syndicate band (often cut at...

Happy born day to reggae's most enduring superstar and the global face of "third world" music, Robert Nesta Marley! Bob and the gang at the Santa Barbara County Bowl, 1979: Positive Vibration 00:00:00 Wake Up and Live 00:06:31 I Shot the Sheriff 00:11:49 Ambush in the Night 00:16:22 Concrete Jungle 00:20:15 Running Away >  00:25:13 Crazy Baldhead 00:28:55 Them Belly Full (But We Hungry) 00:33:22 The Heathen 00:36:46 Ride Natty Ride 00:41:19 Africa Unite 00:45:30 One Drop 00:50:00 Exodus 00:54:04 So Much Things to Say  01:00:14 Zimbabwe 01:03:44 Jamming 01:07:47 Is This Love? 01:12:46 Kinky Reggae 01:16:05 Stir It Up...