Ska Blah Blah » Mento

Ska Online: NPR hearts Jamaican Music

JJ Loy — Fri, 16 Nov 2007 02:37:57 +0000

Maybe you are already a fan of NPR. For those of you that aren’t- that’s National Public Radio. Think PBS, only radio. My love of NPR began with shows like Car Talk and This American Life, and has since grown to include the core of Public Radio’s musical programing. Shows like, American Routes and World Cafe offer listeners music and context that steer towards ethnic, traditional and revivalist styles and away from commercial influence.

Links of Interest:

Live Performance:
LIVE NOW: Toots and the Maytals in Concert
Dave Wakeling: Ska and The English Beat
Lily Allen in Concert with The Bird and The Bee
NPR’s All Things Considered: The Slackers
ERNEST RANGLIN

Profiles:
Ska Cubano
Gypsy Punk Group Gogol Bordello in Concert
Fishbone Flies the Black Rock Flag High
Jackie Mitto: Infectious, Philly-Style Soul, by Way of Jamaica
Ska Cubano: A Parallel Musical Universe
Bob Marley’s Music and Magic Endure
Bob Marley and the Culture of Reggae
Music Review: ‘Mento Madness’ from Various Artists
Jamaican Independence Day

Obit:
Desmond Dekker, the ‘King of Ska’
Remembering Reggae Pioneer Coxsone Dodd

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Ska Online: Story of Jamaican Music Documentary

JJ Loy — Thu, 28 Jun 2007 06:02:00 +0000

A few years back, the BBC made a great documentary, Reggae: The Story of Jamaican Music. It was fantastic, covering the birth of Ska during Jamaica’s independence and all the way up to Dance Hall.

I was most interested in the first episode which dealt mostly with the early ska days. The film takes us to the Alpha Boys School, and introduces us to the nun that helped raise the Skatalites, as well as many other notable Jamaican musicians. The cameras travel down the neighborhoods of Kingston where the original studios and clubs have been left to rot. We hear from likes of Lord Creator, and the then Prime Minister of Jamaica, before the film follows ska’s path to the UK, where we are privy to interviews with UB40, Paul Simonon, and many others.

If you have friends that need a good primer on Jamaican Roots music, I highly recomend this show. My only complaint is that the narrator states outright that Ska is Jamaica’s first type of music, even though the guests anecdotally refer to both Mento and Nyahbinghi in the interviews.

Here now, is the first episode of this great series, broken into four parts (as per Daily Motion rules)

UPDATE 05/10/08: DailyMotion is not cooperating with my embed plugin, but the links are still active:

P.S. DailyMotion is a great site. They let you upload longer segments than YouTube, and I love the way they display their tags, making the more popular tags more prominent than the others. Try searching for obvious tags: Ska, Reggae, or your favorite band. But given their constant embedding issues and increasingly limited content, I don’t really advocate the site any longer.

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Ska Online: Swift River Jamaica

JJ Loy — Thu, 14 Jun 2007 02:42:00 +0000

Swift River, Jamaica, located at the foot of the Blue Mountains has had a string of bad luck stretching as far back as the late 1930′s. Massive floods and hurricanes brought the once busseling village to the brink of extinction several times since 1937. But things have been looking up for Swift River lately, according to Greenstar, a US non-profit that helps rebuild poverty stricken towns around the world.

Greenstar is very cool, as far as I can tell. They have a very keen take on promoting culture, as well as commerce, education and agriculture. They find towns that are down on their luck and bring in Portable Community Centers:

“Using solar power generated by large photovoltaic panels, the center can drive a water purifier, a small clinic, a vaccine cooler, a classroom, a digital studio and a satellite or wireless link to the Internet. We work with the people of each village to develop an ecommerce website, employing local musicians, teachers and art professionals to record the voice of the community. Greenstar packages the materials for various markets, both direct to the consumer, and through licensing to businesses.”

This helps bring in money for the town, and gives them a way to show their cultural distinctiveness to the whole world.Greenstar has photos, art and music posted on their site. In fact the main reason I’m posting this is to point a few of you to the great collection of mp3′s. The people of Swift River have passed on the musical traditions of Mento and Nyahbinghi music through the generations. Here are a few from the Greenstar mp3 page:

- Mento tune, Banana
- Nyahbinghi version of Nobody’s Business
- Swift River child gives some solid advice, No Drugs
- A capella toasting from a local man, Skatel

Check out these and others at the Swift River, Greenstar site.

If you want to support this town, bring your business to it. Not far from Swift River is the Rio Vista Resort. An alternative to the sheltering Club Med style resort, Rio Vista is locally run, with authentic cooking and proximity to rural Jamaican life.

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