reggae

Wayne Murray has been with the same band for 18 years. He has played guitar in stadiums and arenas. He has headlined festivals. He has toured the world and felt the adulation of countless thousands. But after all that time, and all those shows, he is still not an official member of Manic Street Preachers. And that’s fine with him.“It’s the best of both worlds,” Murray says. “I live in Brighton and I have a studio with another musician – we do a lot of music for film and TV. I have a career outside the Manics from that, so…

The singer said the new track is "a song I wrote and listen to, even now, to remember my power and purpose" Rising reggae star Sevana released her latest single “Keep Going (Chosen),” on Friday, marking the Jamaican singer’s first song release of 2024. The song, a vibey mix of traditional reggae and R&B sounds coupled with Sevana’s soul-laden vocals, was produced by Kelsey Gonzalez, bass player for the Free Nationals, who frequently serve as the backing band for Anderson .Paak. “Keep…

On a warm evening last month, inside a cluster of nondescript office spaces south of Miami, a rehearsal studio with a giant lion’s head painted in red, green, and gold on the concrete-block wall hums with activity. Long after the businesses surrounding them have shut down for the day, Stephen “Ragga” Marley and Damian “Jr. Gong” Marley are putting their band through its paces, tuning up for the Traffic Jam tour, which will be crisscrossing the U.S. and Canada through Mar. 30.  “Practice make perfect,” Damian, 45,…

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico —  Peter Anthony Morgan, lead singer of the popular reggae band Morgan Heritage that he founded with four siblings, died Sunday at 46, his family said.The family asked for privacy and thanked people in advance for their love and support. The statement posted on social media did not share a cause of death.Jamaican Prime Minister Andrew Holness wrote on the X social media platform that his “heart is heavy” over the news. He called Morgan’s death a “colossal loss” for Jamaica and reggae music.Morgan,…

The artist, born Peter Anthony Morgan, was the son of the Jamaican musician Denroy Morgan Peter Anthony Morgan, the lead singer of the reggae band Morgan Heritage, has died. The artist, who often went by “Peetah,” was 46 years old, according to reports from the Associated Press, though the statement shared on social media by his family did not specify his age. “It is out of sincere love that we share that our beloved husband, father, son, and brother and lead singer of Morgan Heritage Peter…

In 1976, Bob Marley was the most famous person in Jamaica. He was also a marked man. The star had agreed to play a free concert dubbed “Smile Jamaica.” He’d even written a theme song for the event. Though the show was conceived as a way to quell the rising tide of violence over the island nation’s precarious political state, Marley’s involvement made many think that it was his way of tacitly endorsing the People’s National Party over the more conservative Jamaica Labour Party. Two days before the concert, armed men…

Biopics don’t get more authorised or anaesthetised than this ploddingly solemn account of reggae legend Bob Marley. A great, or good, movie could have been made about Marley’s sensational career, his musical genius, inspirational asceticism (if not quite humility) and poignant sacrificial destiny as someone who drove himself unsparingly through illness to create a free concert for peace and unity in Jamaica in 1978.But this is a reverent Hallmark Channel-type film made with the family’s cooperation – there’s hardly a…

Filming a scene as the title mystic in Bob Marley: One Love, Kingsley Ben-Adir was striding across a room in Jamaica when he heard, “Cut!” Marley’s son Ziggy, who was on set, had some input: He told the actor that his father wouldn’t have walked that particular way. “He was going up the stairs,” Marley says, “and I tell him, ‘Listen! When Bob walks, he takes two steps at a time.’ ” Months later, in New York, Ben-Adir re-creates the revised move, his knees almost coming up to his chin. “Everyone was doing an…

The visceral melodic pulse heard in the bass playing of Aston “Family Man” Barrett, who died on February 3, is most closely associated with anchoring the messages and providing the sonic heartbeat within Bob Marley’s music. In 1970, Family Man and his brother, drummer Carlton “Carly” Barrett, began playing with Marley, Peter Tosh and Bunny Wailer, who had formed the Wailers in 1963. Following the departure of Tosh and Wailer from the group in 1973 and throughout Marley’s rise to global stardom as the decade…

Aston “Family Man” Barrett, bassist for Bob Marley and the Wailers, has died aged 77.The news was confirmed on Saturday by Olivia Grange, Jamaica’s minister for culture, who wrote on X (formerly Twitter): “I share with you my deep regret at the passing of Aston Francis Barrett, popularly known as ‘Family Man’ or ‘Fams’ … He died at the University of Miami Hospital in Florida in the United States early this morning.”Barrett was born in 1946 and grew up in Kingston, where he would help to lay the foundations for reggae and…