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SKA, one of the musical genres Jamaica has gifted the world, will be celebrated today, July 1, International Reggae Day. Conceptualiser of the virtual celebration of Jamaican music Andrea Davis told the Jamaica Observer that the decision to celebrate ska this year was taken in a bid to pay homage to the genre which is celebrating 60 years, just like Jamaican Independence and spawned so much of the success that the country’s music has had on the world scene. “There is a big ska market all over the globe. It is very much a vibrant genre, even if it is...

<p>Reggae music became popular in the late 1960s, when young people were excited about it and gravitated to the new sound. The artists were mainly grass-roots people who used their voices to articulate a message and communicate to the masses. Old-time reggae lyrics described life events in the Caribbean culture to which most people could relate.</p>

Who said “no man is an island?” Certainly not Ian Fleming, the writer who wrote “my name is Bond – James Bond.” He first introduced that identifier in 1962 in a film titled “Dr. No” just two months after Jamaica shed its dependency on its imperial governors. As a matter of fact, the British novelist and Jamaican resident repeated the line in all his novels and films to successfully clue audiences throughout the world of a spy numbered 007 able to outsmart the most heinous criminals from Asia and Eastern Europe. That Jamaicans celebrated two coming out events that year...

'Bunny' Will Be Missed - Veteran Artiste Passes After Long Battle With Cancer Published:Thursday | May 11, 2017 | 5:00 AMShereita Grizzle Previous Next File Scully (left) performing with Bunny at the Heart of Ska show, held at the Jamaica Festival Village, Ranny Williams Centre, Hope Road, on Saturday, August 2, 2014. 1 2 Arthur 'Bunny' Robinson, of the musical duo, Bunny and Scully has died. Bunny passed away at the University Hospital of the West Indies (Mona) yesterday morning. This comes approximately two months after his musical partner Scully, died at home on Maxfield Avenue in February. In a...

Mento takes centre stage in this year’s Groundation series organised by the Jamaica Music Museum. For curator and director of the museum, Herbie Miller, the decision to focus on mento — one of the earliest of Jamaica’s indigenous music forms — is deliberate, given the importance of the music to the evolution of reggae. “Mento has for a large extent been overlooked, but for the actions of a small group. Not enough people value mento for the role it has played and value it for being fundamental to pop music forms from ska to dancehall. Despite the lack of a...

If there's one musical style that epitomizes summer, it might be the loping island style of ska. It caught fire in early '60s Jamaica, a precursor to reggae. Player utilities PopoutShare 00:0000:00 download This story is based on a radio interview. Listen to the full interview. But ska has gone through a few iterations. Ska is really a fusion of American R&B with Jamaican jazz, says Brad Klein, a Minneapolis-based filmmaker who traced the history of ska in a documentary, "Legends of Ska. Without Ska, there is no reggae." "Bob Marley, Peter Tosh, and Jimmy Cliff ... all started in...