Tyrone Taylor, the reggae singer whose 1983 song Cottage in Negril is considered a classic, died on Saturday. Norman ‘Bull Puss’ Bryan, a close friend of Taylor’s, said Taylor died from prostate cancer in Kingston.
The St. Elizabeth-born Taylor, who was 50 years old, had fallen on hard times. He suffered two strokes in recent years and spoke openly of a substance abuse problem that derailed a promising career.
Taylor’s recording career began during the 1970s when he recorded several songs for top-flight producers like Winston ‘Niney’ Holness. But it was not until the early 1980s that he hit paydirt with Cottage in Negril.
The song, driven by Taylor’s soulful delivery and an infectious saxophone solo, was a homage to the West End resort town which became a hang-out for American hippies and college students in the 1970s.
Signature song
Cottage in Negril became his signature song, popping up on reggae compilations from European record companies. It made Taylor a minor star on that continent. [...]
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In it’s first week of release Shaggy’s latest Album titled Intoxication debuted at number 1 on the Billboard to Reggae Albums chart.
Other interesting albums on the charts include Ky-Mani Marley’s Radio, I Wayne’s Book of Life and Movado’s Gangsta For Life / The Symphony Of David Brooks.
Popularity: 100% [?]
The annual Air Jamaica Jazz and Blues Festival will be taking place for the 11th next year. From January 24 – 26, 2008, music lovers at home and from abroad will be welcomed to the beautiful Rose Hall Resort in Montego Bay for the 3 day musical presentation. World famous musicians like Dianna Ross, Billy Ocean and Anita Baker to name a few will put their musical talents on show for patrons of one of the most anticipated entertainment events of the year.
Air Jamaica Jazz and Blues Festival 2008 Website
Visit the 2008 Air Jamaica Jazz and Blues Festival website for information about next year’s staging, the full line-up, ticket information, the history of the show and much more.
Popularity: 4% [?]
The words of ‘Daddy Don’t Touch Me There’ might not be Queen Ifrica’s personal experience but she had no problem delivering the song convincingly on Monday during the launch of ‘Get the Picture: Drawing the Line Against Child Abuse’.
The launch, which took the form of a candle-light vigil, was put on by the Child Development Agency (CDA) as part of the World Day for the Prevention of Child Abuse.
Those in attendance were asked to march around the park with glow sticks for the 279 children who have been killed since the start of the year. Additionally, 279 balloons were simultaneously released in the air in recognition of the deceased children.
“These are some serious things taking place in our society; we can do something about it by speaking up. Today, November 19, I want the abuse against our youths to stop,” said Ifrica near to the end of her performance. [...]
Popularity: 4% [?]
Alicia Keys performs her latest hit “No One” at the 2007 American Music awards. He performance was peppered by Jamaica’s reggae and Dancehall music and featured Junior Reid, Chaka Demus & Pliers & Beenie Man.
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It is the first-ever Academy Awards to take place in Jamaica and already hundreds of artistes producers and other reggae music interests have been signing up to participate in next February’s first staging.
The Reggae Academy has been established through the initiative of the Recording Industry Association of Jamaica (RIAJam), with a view to create the necessary infrastructure for the planning and presentation of the Reggae Academy Awards, an annual event geared towards the Jamaican and international reggae music communities.
The organisers of the academy felt there was the need to create an award event to recognise and celebrate excellence in reggae, which would encompass producers, songwriters, vocalists, engineers and music video directors.
And those who applied before October 1 will be entitled to participate in the process of determining the recordings, artistes and producers that will be up for consideration in 34 proposed categories. Plans are already in high gear, as RIAJam had been encouraging practitioners in the music industry to submit their applications by then.
So far, says entertainment lawyer and member of the organising team, Lloyd Stanbury, “Just over a hundred persons made deadlines and we still have a few that we are processing.” [...]
Popularity: 4% [?]
‘Intoxication’ is Shaggy’s eighth studio album and his first for dancehall label VP Records. It also heralds a return to heavy dancehall and ragga that featured on his earlier material. Guest collaborations come from Rik Rok, Rayvon and Akon which it turn give the album a more commercial pop leaning with that famous sub baritone voice booming throughout. Features the singles ‘Church Heathen’ and ‘What’s Love’
Track Listing for Intoxication
1. Can’t Hold Me
2. Bonafide Girl featuring Rik Rok & Tony Gold
3. Intoxication
4. Those Days featuring Nasha
5. More Woman
6. Woman Scorn featuring Nasha
7. Mad Mad World featuring Sizzla Kalonji & Collie Buddz
8. Out Of Control featuring Rayvon
9. Church Heathen
10. Wear Di Crown featuring Mischieve
11. Criteria
12. Body A Shake
13. What’s Love featuring Akon
14. Holla At You
15. All About Love
16. Reggae Vibes (Bonus Track)
Popularity: 4% [?]
Unsigned Jamaican musicians and singers with their own material will get a shot at stardom when the BBC World Service and BBC World Television bring their global talent search to Jamaica.
Titled ‘The Next Big Thing 2007′, the talent search requires all bands and artistes to meet the Next Big Thing team and to hand over a CD or DVD of their music at the Ashanti Oasis Restaurant at Hope Gardens in Kingston between 10:00 am and 6:00 pm.
“This is not an audition, and there will be no performances, but there is a chance to be interviewed for the BBC,” a news release from the BBC said. “We are scouring the world looking for exciting new music, bands and performers who will shape the future.”
In addition to tomorrow’s event, musicians can also enter online at www.bbcworldservice.com/nextbigthing2007, the BBC said, adding that The Next Big Thing 2007 in Jamaica, being held in association with Radio Jamaica and Television Jamaica, “is completely free and unmediated”.
Said the BBC: “Forget the big labels and mainstream music business, we’re looking for boldness and brilliance - musical pioneers who really deserve attention.”
The BBC said that last year the talent search received entries from thousands of musicians from over 40 countries. The winner, Silva, went on to have a number one hit in her home country, Armenia, and played the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles.
The BBC World Service is easily the biggest international broadcaster in the world with an audience of 183 million listeners in 33 languages.
For this year’s talent search, the BBC World Service will be joined by BBC World Television “to expose the new and establish a platform for musicians to create and perform original music,” the news release said.
“We are very glad to have been asked by the BBC to be a part of this,” the release quoted Geoff Travis, founder of Rough Trade who signed The Smiths, Travis, The Strokes and many more. “We are astonished at the standard of the entries, we are very very pleasantly surprised.”
The BBC have selected a panel of international music experts, including Caspar Llewellyn-Smith, editor of the Observer Music Monthly; Will Hodgkinson, music journalist for Mojo and the Guardian; and Paul Stokes, features editor, NME to help choose five finalists.
Entries close on November 18, 2007, and finalists will perform for an all-star jury in London in December. One act will be crowned The Next Big Thing 2007 and perform to a live audience of 3,000 people at London’s O2 stadium to celebrate the BBC World Service’s 75th Anniversary in December, alongside some of the most exciting names in music, the news release said.
Popularity: 4% [?]
Thousands of fans bade an emotional farewell on Sunday to South Africa’s top reggae star Lucky Dube, whose murder in an apparent botched carjacking stunned even a nation hardened to violent crime.
Rastafarians and members of the African Shembe Christian church to which Dube belonged were prominent in the crowds who thronged to his rural home for his funeral.
Local musicians and fans from across Africa sang hymns and paid tribute to South Africa’s biggest-selling reggae singer and one of the country’s most successful artistes.
His wife Zanele and children broke down in tears as one of Dube’s best-known songs played over the loudspeaker at the public ceremony on his farm near the remote village of Ingogo, about 250 km (160 miles) southeast of Johannesburg.
The internationally acclaimed singer, who recorded 22 albums in English, Zulu and Afrikaans and won more than 20 awards in a 25-year entertainment career, was then buried in his garden in a private family ceremony.
The 43-year-old was shot dead in front of his children in a Johannesburg suburb on October 18. Five men have been arrested.
The high-profile killing prompted new calls for a crackdown on violent crime in South Africa, which has one of the highest crime rates in the world.
Police figures show there were nearly 20,000 murders in the year to the end of March, 2.4 percent up on the year before. The number of rapes, carjackings and assaults also remained high.
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Having sold more than 20 million records worldwide, Shaggy doesn’t exactly fit the mold of the struggling artist. Yet with a smile and a big sigh of relief, the Jamaican-born, New York-raised singer says that only now does he feel that the struggle is mostly behind him, thanks in large part to the expiration of his last major-label contract.
Due November 13, Shaggy’s first album since parting ways with Geffen last year, “Intoxication,” is being issued through a 50/50 joint-venture, one-album deal between his own Big Yard label and the Queens, N.Y.-based VP Records. Per similar deals, Shaggy owns the recording and licenses the final product to the reggae label, which has previously issued various 12-inch singles from the singer and several Big Yard releases.
In a word, he said, this disc is all about “freedom”: “For the first time, I’m in my own driver’s seat,” he said.
If Shaggy is perhaps the only dancehall singer to reach the upper echelons of the Billboard charts repeatedly during the past decade, he insists — with pride — that it’s a hard-earned track record. He cut the massive “Hot Shot,” released in 2000 and featuring such hits as “It Wasn’t Me” and “Angel,” in his basement studio after Virgin dropped him. The album has sold 6.8 million copies in the United States, according to Nielsen SoundScan. [...]
Popularity: 6% [?]
