High time for a world-class Reggae museum

[Jangle]

The Jamaica Music Museum on Water Lane is housed in a former storeroom at the Institute of Jamaica. The exhibition gallery is approximately 1,000 square feet. It sounds even smaller in square metres: 92.9. The size of the museum tells you all you need to know about the lack of foresight of its founders. Instead of starting with a clear plan for the museum and finding a space in which to bring the vision to reality, the founders worked back to front.

It seems as if a decision was taken that the museum had to be on the site of the Institute of Jamaica on East Street. All that was available was a storeroom and the museum was forced into it. How in God’s name could a small room in a backwater of downtown Kingston be seen as an appropriate place for the Jamaica Music Museum? It makes absolutely no sense.

The museum was launched in 2000 and it took all of nine years to appoint a director/curator, Mr Herbie Miller. He’s a man of many talents: musicologist, artiste manager, social analyst, songwriter, music producer and cultural historian. Unfortunately, he is not a magician. Over the last decade or so, he has tried valiantly to transform the storeroom into a museum. He has negotiated the acquisition of approximately 500 artefacts but there is no place to display the majority of them. These valuable cultural objects remain in the safekeeping of their owners, awaiting a proper museum.


https://jamaica-gleaner.com/article/...-reggae-museum

[Jangle]

Rita Marley exhibition opens tomorrow


ONE of the main aspects of the celebrations for Bob Marley's 77th birthday is the opening of an exhibition dedicated to his widow, matriarch recording artiste, businesswoman and philanthropist Rita Marley.

Housed in two rooms of the Bob Marley Museum located at 56 Hope Road in St Andrew, the installation dubbed Mystic of a Queen was curated by Berrette Macaulay and features photographs, articles of clothing and other items connected to Rita Marley, showcasing the diverse paths of her multifaceted life. The Jamaica Observer was granted a preview of the exhibit which will open to the public tomorrow.

According to operations manager and legal counsel at the Bob Marley Group of Companies, Lecia-Gaye Taylor, the exhibition was actually commissioned last year for her 75th birthday but is now being shared with the public during the celebrations of Bob Marley's birthday, given how interconnected the stories of these two icons of Jamaican music and culture are.


https://www.jamaicaobserver.com/ente...omorrow_243273

[OJ]

Who would be your first 10 in a reggae hall of fame, mine would be:
Alton Ellis
Bob Marley
Dennis Brown
Desmond Decker
Peter Tosh
Jimmy Cliff
Bunny Wailer
Marcia Griffey’s
Clement Dodd
Duke Reid

[Jangle]

Naming the first 10 would be such a difficult job for any committee. That's why the sooner they start the better. I would take out Peter and Bunny and put in Millie Smalls and Prince Buster.

[OJ]

Brilliant Jangle. I found it difficult., actually I tried picking 50 and could not get in 50 without leaving out key people. You brought up a good point you can argue that some of our greatest like Peter and Bunny should be in a HOF based on groups but not individual performance. I think Peter should be there but not bunny also the I-trees but not Rita or Judy.. I also think this should be a private sector thing not government. I wish more could debat this.. How do we move this up top.

[Jangle]

You got my point spot on. An initial 10 would be too small. Maybe a first 25. There are musicians who would need to be inducted in that first batch like Ernie Ranglin, Monty Alexander, Scratch Perry and then there are Toots Hibbert, Delroy Wilson, Marcia Griffiths and Bob Andy. There are also the Sound Systems and also radio announcers that contributed to the rise of Reggae like Barry G, just to name one.

[Assasin]

I started listening to Teach Dem on Youtube. It is some of the best chronicles of the days gone by. If only we could have some of these things on a digital library. Not only do we need a reggae museum. Every parish should also have a space for cultural, sports and historical figures. Who said arts and culture have to be boring?

[OJ]

I look forward to teach dem. Also you can check out muscle head he has some decent convo. Interestingly saw the lovindeer one all this time I thought Jammys originated punnany riddinm. Was surprise

[Assasin]

Isn't it interesting? We should have some lecture all across Jamaica and let the youths know. That era was very interesting. It should be recorded in a museum as well and provide lectures and exhibits not only for tourists but for Jamaicans and tribute to the people who work hard in the industry.

[OJ]

sass whats your top 15 reggae artist.

[Assasin]

I was thinking and saying for me it is more like a top 50. Looking back on some the talent we had. However I will give a try in a little.

[Assasin]

Bob Marley and the wailers (which includes Peter and Bunny)
Dennis Brown
Sir Coxson Dodd
Jimmy Cliff
Marcia Griffiths
Jackie Mittoo
Sly and Robbie
U-Roy
Desmond Decker
Alton Ellis

I would also have Mikey Dread Campbell for his contribution to Radio DJying that changed Reggae Radio Dying for ever plus his great production career. Lady Saw or Mumma Nancy need to be mention also as contribution from woman DJ. There is just so many people who deserve to be in.

[Jangle]

So here’s the thing, a Reggae museum must tell the story of the genre’s origination. So we have to go back to Mento and Ska. Stanley and the Turbines name has to mentioned, The Skattalites and the unproven originator of the word Reggae, Toots Hibbert and the Maytals ……. As I said, it’s a difficult task that will inevitably cause much controversy.

[Assasin]

The reason I put Sly and Robbie and Jackie Mittoo is that they are responsible for most of the riddims that was build in Jamaica in Reggae and Dancehall. Even though Dodd was the owner and producer Mittoo was the man responsible for the arrangement and work. I put Daddy Roy as the Originator of modern DYing and he has a lot of hit records in his days. Toots really have to be in there, who should I take out ? To be frank they would have to start with about 15 at least.

[Jangle]

When Kong was king

The Jamaica Observer's Entertainment Desk continues with the fifth of its biweekly feature looking at seminal moments that have helped shape Jamaica over the past 60 years.

A musical energy surged through Jamaica in 1962. A number of songs that later earned the stamp 'classic' were recorded in the months leading to Independence in August.



Several of them were produced by Leslie Kong, a Chinese businessman who operated Beverley's Records along with his brothers Fats and Cecil.



Kong, who died in August 1971, was the first producer to record Jimmy Cliff and Bob Marley. The latter's initial songs, Judge Not, One Cup of Coffee and Terror, were all done in 1962.



Cliff cut his first song, Dearest Beverley, the previous year. He had a fruitful 10-year association with Kong that yielded hits like Hurricane Hattie, Wonderful World Beautiful People, Sitting in Limbo and The Harder They Come.



“He was a good man. When yuh talk about unsung heroes, that's Leslie Kong. He made the most international hits...out of [producers] Coxsone [Clement Dodd], Duke Reid and King Edwards [Vin Edwards],” Cliff said in an interview with the Jamaica Observer in December.



Derrick Morgan, who was introduced to Kong by Cliff, scored with Be Still, She's Gone and the independence anthem, Forward March for Beverley's Records in 1962. In a 2020 interview with the Observer, he described Kong as “a great guy”.

https://www.jamaicaobserver.com/ente...2?profile=1116

[Jangle]

Maxine Stowe Calls Out Chris Blackwell’s “White Knight Storyline”

Attorney-at-law Maxine Stowe has taken issue with some of the content from Chris Blackwell’s upcoming memoir, maintaining that what the Islands Records co-founder described as an ‘unfounded perception of favoritism towards Bob Marley’, was real, and was, according to her, “pre-meditated false marketing” aimed at ‘black erasure’ of Peter Tosh and Bunny Wailer.

Her comments come in the aftermath of the publication of excerpts from Blackwell’s new book, titled Islander: My Life in Music and Beyond, and suggestions, on DancehallMag‘s Facebook page, that “the Wailers were too talented to stay together” and that Bob Marley was more “steadfast and driven than Peter and Bunny”.

In response, Stowe, who served as the late Bunny Wailer’s manager up to the time of his death, referenced British band The Beatles, noting that although they had split, the works they created as a group are credited to all of its members, unlike the Wailers, which she maintains, was fragmented by an unjust Blackwell, who credited all the Intellectual Property, including songs penned and sung by Bunny and Peter, to Marley.

“So were The Beatles, the difference being the world knows who The Beatles are and respect their group works, catalog, IP and achievements whereas Blackwell’s marketing result has the world thinking that The Wailers are Bob Marley’s solo backing band of musicians!” Stowe wrote in a comment.

“So it’s not ‘perceived favoritism’ it’s ‘pre-meditated false marketing’ that results in loss of valuable identity rights, intellectual property rights, publishing etc. It is also extends to the ‘Favoritism’ in the Jamaica Music Industry relating to the ‘Two Jamaicas’!” she said alluding to the long-held notion of entrenched double standards on the island, where two sets of rules continue to be being applied depending on a person’s social status, and where the well-connected are shielded from prosecution.


https://www.dancehallmag.com/2022/06...RMQw9Su5FUiPFM