OCTOBER 2024 ISSUE
A sneaky peek of just some of what is in the October 2024 issue – OUT NOW!
SAMARA JOY
The creative tension between small groups and big bands has been a defining feature of jazz. Each format has its advantages and disadvantages, and many artists move liberally between the two. So it is with Samara Joy, the 24-year-old singer who has already bagged Grammys in her short career and headlines at concert halls the world over. After long tours with a trio she unveils a larger line-up on her new set Portrait.
“Well, I would say I was always wanting to experiment by playing with horns and having more orchestrations. And kind of figuring out how to make it sound like a big band, like an orchestra, even though there are only four horns present.
“I guess I was just by keeping my ears open,” she says breezily. “I really enjoy being supported by those kinds of arrangements and also being a part of them.”
KUMAR
When the story of today’s reggae is written, Easy Star Records will be hailed as one of this era’s most influential record labels, in much the same way as Greensleeves and VP Records once were. Mortimer, Samory I, Protoje and Jesse Royal have all benefitted from the Brooklyn label’s support in recent years, although their remit extends beyond Jamaica alone, since they’ve also played a major role in promoting reggae music from Hawaii, the US and Europe. Their approach is one that chimes in perfect accord with the times, because whilst acknowledging Jamaica as reggae’s birthplace, it embraces how the genre has since exploded globally.
Easy Star’s latest project Tales Of Reality finds an exciting Jamaican talent – former Raging Fyah lead vocalist and now solo star Kumar Bent – joining forces with top reggae musicians from Europe. The latter’s playing on releases by 18th Parallel, Najavibes and the Fruits, Addis and Evidence labels has helped put Switzerland on the world map where quality roots reggae music is concerned, and Kumar and the 18th Parallel’s new album, featuring the recent singles Worldwide Love and Salvation, shouldn’t be missed.
RAQUEL RODRIGUEZ
Jarrod Lawson and I are in total agreement: Raquel Rodriguez sings beautifully, never overstates her case, delivers pure tones when she should, shows off the runs only when it feels right and prefers space to endless clutter in her backdrops. “It just does something for my heart,” says Jarrod, with sincerity, as he reflects on the pleasure of recording a duet, Next Move, with the LA-based, Mexican-American singer/songwriter, the tune set to appear on Lawson’s spring 2025 album as well as in single format right now.
I decide to read out the man’s full, extremely complimentary statement to Raquel – see page 6 – right at the start of our Zoom conversation, in a shameless attempt to get into the good books. She does seem appropriately pleased. And, in what turns out to be typical style, quickly opts to praise others for the technique:
“I will say I credit a lot of that approach to my teachers at USC, the University of Southern California. My major was split to half Music Industry and half Jazz Studies, with an emphasis on vocal jazz. And I think my teachers really kind of drilled it into me. They’d say, ‘Yes, you’re an amazing singer. You can do all the acrobatics, if you want. But from a jazz perspective, or just from that of a true vocalist, to be able to sing something beautifully in the most simple way is one of the hardest things you can do – and if you can do that, then you’re truly a good singer.”
YELLOWMAN
We can only imagine what was said, and what went through the minds of Yellowman’s parents at 54 Chisholm Avenue, in the Maxfield Park area of Kingston on the morning of January 15, 1957, when his mother Pearl Golding gave birth to him. Both she and his father were black, and yet their baby was white. Either she’d been having an affair, or he was a dreaded “dundus” – an albino, the victim of an unfortunate twist of fate that would make him a pariah in the minds of most Jamaicans, and especially poor and semi-literate ones like them.
Within hours she had put him in a shopping bag and deposited him on the back of a garbage truck. Luckily he was discovered before anything worse happened to him and he was taken to the orphanage in Maxfield Park, the same one where Bob Andy, then known as Keith Anderson, learnt to play piano, and there were other children bearing the dreadful stigma of albinism. Yellowman, who was registered there under the name of Winston Foster, later wrote lyrics about the circumstances of his birth. It began with the line, “Lord, what an ugly baby!” Yet that old Jamaican – or more likely Biblical – saying, “the stone that the builder refuses, shall be the head cornerstone” would certainly prove true in his case.