MTV Iggy, September 15, 2011 “It used to be that when people saw you with hair like this, you were considered a lunatic,” says Tiken Jah Fakoly, the reggae artist from Ivory Coast. Fakoly’s dreads are short and orderly, the kind of look that would pass unnoticed on a Brooklyn street. But he is right: […]
Tag: reggae
Getting down with dub
Boston Globe, September 3, 2011 In the beginning there was dub. Well, in the beginning there was reggae. But from the early 1970s in Jamaica, sound engineers led by now-historic figures such as King Tubby stepped out of the shadows and became performers in their own right. Using controllers, mixers, and effects, they generated a […]
MC Ras Ceylon: One love from Sri Lanka to Jamaica
MTV Desi, June 6, 2011 “The Gideon Force was the regiment that kicked the fascists out of Ethiopia,” explains Oakland-based MC Ras Ceylon. The force, he says, resisted the Italian incursion against the Ethiopia of Haile Selassie, the emperor sacred to Rastafarians. It inspired the title of the latest mixtape from the reggae and hip hop […]
Activist/MC Delhi Sultanate: “The new rich kids are ignorant, selfish and crude”
MTV Desi, June 3, 2011 Not long ago we featured a remarkable collaboration called the Bant Singh Project. Bant Singh is the Punjabi Dalit singer and political activist who lost several limbs after a vicious beating by upper-caste neighbors after he dared confront them for raping his daughter. After Bant Singh refused to be silenced and continued […]
A hot ticket but not the most exciting one
Boston Globe, February 15, 2006 When he’s not making music, Matisyahu, the Hasidic reggae singer from Brooklyn, spends most of his time in shul, contemplating the Almighty. So it would have taken far more than a snowstorm, a mere terrestrial impediment, to stop him from delivering his scheduled performance at Avalon Sunday night. It’s simply […]
O’Connor’s reggae is righteous
Boston Globe, December 8, 2005 Sinead O’Connor doesn’t give a damn. At 39 and officially retired from the pop life, the stellar Irish singer has found a spiritual home in Rastafari and a renewed musical purpose in interpreting hallowed roots-reggae classics. Whether this personal evolution makes any sense to you is not her problem. And, […]
Siddhartha Mitter 