Ask Blackie

MIRAMAR – Hundreds of people packed the Miramar Cultural Center recently for Rhythms of Africa, Music Around the World, with Willie Stewart, formerly of the legendary Jamaican reggae band Third World, and a group of 60 children from Miramar Early Childhood program, Aspira, and Little Kids of Miramar.

Stewart, who spent 23 years with Third World, and later pursued music education in England, began weekly lessons with the children in December.

“Most of the kids had never picked up a musical instrument before I met them,” said Stewart. “They were eager to learn and quickly absorbed everything in just 10 one-hour sessions over an eight week period.”

After a brief history lesson on the many uses of the drum, the show, designed to highlight the journey of music from Africa across the continents, got off to a rousing start. Seemingly hesitant at first, the children, some of whom were dwarfed by the larger drums, quickly got into the swing of things, performing a repertoire of music from the Ivory Coast to Morocco.

The synergy between Stewart and the children was highly evident throughout the hour-long segment as they moved effortlessly from one piece to the next.

Also joining Stewart, to round out the musical journey through Brazil, Haiti, Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago, and the U.S., were seven-year-old master percussionist Miguel Russell, local violinist Nicole Yarling, Jamaican singers Sabrina Williams and Carl McDonald, singer Melissa Stokes, his daughter Leea Stewart, and backed by musicians Jesse Jones, Jr. and his brother famous jazz trumpeter Melton Mustafa, Steve Lashley, of KC & the Sunshine Band, guitarist Robert Johnston, Jaime Hinckson, and Trinidadian steel pan player George Goddard. Dancer Nicholas Pairman of the National Dance Theatre Company (NDTC) of Jamaica and Florida State University dancers paid special tribute to James Brown and Michael Jackson.

KINGSTON, Jamaica – Jamaica’s musical fraternity is lending its support to the recovery efforts of its Caribbean neighbors in Haiti. This has resulted in the creation of “Listen 2 the Call,” a collaborative song which will have its global premiere on Tuesday, February 23 at 4:53 pm EST. Written by Raymond Azan, co-founder of For Jamaica Inc., and produced by Handel Tucker, “Listen 2 the Call” is a special musical gift made possible through the contribution of more than 30 of the island’s top artistes and musicians.

This version of “Listen 2 the Call,” which will premiere on February 23, is a special mix of the song, which runs for four minutes and fifty three seconds to commemorate the time the quake hit the Haitian capital. The lyrics offer encouragement and support for the people of Haiti.

According to the producers, “The goal of this project is to inspire people around the world to “Listen 2 the Call” not only of the poor, the suffering and displaced in Haiti, but rather to listen to their conscience and extend a helping hand.”

“Music is an important part of our culture and it is heartening to see the collaboration of a number of our top entertainers as part of a global effort to help our Haitian neighbors,” says John Lynch, Director of Tourism, Jamaica Tourist Board. “We hope everyone will “Listen 2 the Call” and act.”

Following the global simulcast premiere on February 23, the full version of the song will be available online for purchase. Proceeds from the sale of this song, including videos will be used to assist Haiti’s recovery and rehabilitation.

REGGAE crooner Gramps Morgan, fresh from copping the prestigious Album of the Year Award for his debut solo disc 2 Sides of My Heart Vol.1 at this year’s Excellence in Music and Entertainment Awards (EME), has now secured a whopping 5 nominations for the 2010 International Reggae and World Music Awards (IRAWA) that will be staged on Sunday, May 2 at the York College Performing Arts Center in Queens, New York.

Gramps’ nominations include: Best Song – Wash the Tears; Best Male Vocalist; Best Crossover Song – Therapy ft India.Arie; Best New Entertainer and Songwriter of the Year.

“I’m so excited and overwhelmed to have five nominations,” said Gramps. “Since I launched my solo career I have had a number of pleasant surprises and this is certainly one of them. It is a tremendous feeling of accomplishment. I thank the fans and the media for the support and my management team for the hard work that they have put into my project so far.”

Gramps’ current success comes on the heels of a whirlwind year in 2009 that included a major US tour with Arie and John Legend. In August 2009, he performed back to back, sold out events at the World famous Madison Square Gardens in New York and topped off the summer with a strong performance at Irie Jamboree, North America’s premier reggae festival. His debut album Two Side of My Heart Vol 1 had one of the strongest reggae debuts ever, racking up impressive sales in its first week. Then in October at Citi Field Stadium in New York City, home to the legendary New York Mets baseball team, he delivered a sizzling pre-game performance of his hit single Don’t Cry for Jamaica, which warmed the hearts of thousands of baseball fans at the Mets vs Houston Astros game.

For 2010, Gramps plans to remain focused on his core mission which is to heal the world with his music. Just last weekend he embarked on yet another first, taking the stage for two historic performances in Las Vegas, at the largest rugby event in North America, the USA Sevens International Rugby Tournament. This weekend he heads to the West Coast to perform at the Ragga Muffins Festival on February 20 with acts like Shaggy, Yellowman, Big Youth, Barrington Levy, Gregory Isaacs, Tarrus Riley, and The Mighty Diamonds.

Jimmy Cliff already holds the Order of Merit, the highest honor bestowed by his native Jamaica, where the reggae legend stands alongside Bob Marley and Peter Tosh in the genre’s Mt. Rushmore. Now, he deservedly follows Marley from the reggae world into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, where he will be inducted by longtime admirer and friendWyclef Jean.

The accolade comes at a perfect time for Cliff, who will release a new album, ‘Existence,’ this year and gets set for his first major US tour in five years, including dates at Bonnaroo and the Hollywood Bowl, this summer. On the eve of his induction, the elegant and gracious Cliff spoke with Spinner about his influence on the likes of the Grateful Dead and Keith Richards, the enduring impact of ‘The Harder They Come’ and about finally getting to the next level in the US.

Where were you when you found out you’d been selected?

When I first heard, I was in New York City. I had just finished a tribute to the president of Ghana, and after I came offstage somebody said, “Congratulations.” I said, “Thank you. For what?” I thought he meant for my performance. But he said, “No, you’ve just been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.” I said, “Oh.” I had not heard anything.

You’re only the second reggae artist, after Bob Marley, to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Do you feel like then you’re carrying the torch for the genre with your induction?

The way I look at it, in the genre of reggae music I was there at almost the commencement of it, so I played my role there. Bob Marley came after, so I did a lot of things internationally before anyone else. So I’ve always seen my role as one of like a shepherd, one who opens the gate. So who opens the gate has to close it.

You’re doing an extensive US tour this year, as well. Was that planned to coincide with this or was that just a happy coincidence?

Actually, it was planned ’cause I have not toured the US for five years out of choice. And I just said, “OK, it’s time. I want to go tour the US again.” And then that came about, so it all coincided together.

What made this the right time to tour the US, then?

I wanted to come back to the US on a new footing, and the new footing now is I have a new album, which I’m very excited about. I have a movie planned, which may go into production this year. And with all of those things going on, I just feel like now is the time to go back into the US.

‘Existence,’ your new album, comes out later in the year. Who are you working with on the record?

All young creative Jamaican musicians; they’re all young, they’re all fresh, and they’re all just roaring to go. I love to do that. Throughout my career, I’ve always liked to touch on who’s new.

How much does working with that young blood inspire you as a musician?

Fantastically. I bring to them my songs and when they heard the songs they became more excited. So that really motivates me, ’cause the encouragement and appreciation is something we all need in everything we do.

You can’t get more appreciation than being into a Hall of Fame. What does it mean to you then?

OK, it’s a stepping stone to another level of success. It’s a journey that I’ve been on, and this stop on the journey is really an exciting one and a great stepping stone to the other level.

What do you hope for the other level to be?

Well, I have established myself, along with the music that I helped create. And I’ve played stadiums in Africa and certain parts of South America, but I’ve not done that in the US. I’ve done it some parts of Europe, so that is something I look forward to doing. I have made, like, four movies. My first love was acting, and that’s another area that I have to explore much more extensively. So, yeah, there’s a lot more to be done.

In a lot of respects, over here for people the music and film started off intertwined when it comes to your career because of ‘The Harder They Come.’ But then you continued making music. So do you feel like in a way film has been overlooked?

In one way, however, I focus myself in the musical area, and, like, two, three, four years after the movie came out, there were still a few roles coming. But not roles I felt I wanted to do, and because I had my music to fall back on I just say, “When the right one comes along.”

There are many great artists on the Bonnaroo lineup. Who are you excited to see and are there any old friends you’re looking forward to catching up with?

I’ve met Stevie Wonder and I’ve always been a big fan. I’m a fan of Jay-Z, I’ve met Dave Matthews, we’ve done one tour together. So it’ll be great to catch up with those people again if at all possible.

You’re a fan of Jay-Z and Dave Matthews. Are there artists you really feel are carrying on the spirit of the music you started in terms of social consciousness and telling stories?

A lot that I’ve seen in different genres of music, from rap to rock to R&B, even in country because somebody like a country legend like Willie Nelson has done a version of ‘The Harder They Come.’ And rock legends like the Rolling Stones, Keith Richards in particular, have covered also songs of mine, and the list goes on. So many of the artists that I’ve seen are influenced and inspired by the music that I have created and it is gratifying to see that and encouraging for me because I do feel like my greater work is yet to be done.

Are there any covers of your songs that stand out as favorites?

Well, I appreciated all of them. There was a song that was done by the Grateful Dead when Jerry Garcia was around, called ‘Struggling Man,’ and I was really amazed when I first saw him perform that song in his own rock way. That one really touched me a lot. I have to say I like a lot the version [of 'Many Rivers To Cross'] of Nilsson, which John Lennon produced because I loved some of the work of Nilsson I heard in the past and I really liked the way they both collaborated on that one.

Now, let’s switch it around to your covers. You’ve done stuff like Cat Stevens’ ‘Wild World.’

As a songwriter what is one song you wish you could have written, and why?

There are a quite a few, but let me just name one: I would have to say Paul Simon andArt Garfunkel, ‘The Boxer.’ Boxing has always been my favorite sport because when I look at boxing it makes me see that this is really what life is. The boxer has in his corner all his trainers, his handlers, his manager, everyone that’s around him. But when the time comes to step into that ring, he’s by himself, he has to defend himself in there, and for me, that’s really how life is.

Wyclef Jean is inducting you into the Hall of Fame. Talk about your friendship.

Well, I’m a great fan of Wyclef, as well; as a creative person, he’s brilliant. And we’ve done some work in the very early stages before Fugees even broke big, in his basement studio. And then my last album, but we’ve seen each other on and off in that time since my last album. And then we did a track off that album. So, yeah, it’s a very artistic and brotherly respect, because we’re also neighbors in terms of coming out in the Caribbean there.

Who are you looking forward to seeing at the ceremony?

Well, I’ve always been a fan of Genesis, from Peter Gabriel, when he was with them, and when they broke away and did separate albums. I understand that Genesis won’t be performing, but I would love to see them perform all together. I love Abba’s music. The Stooges are great, and the Hollies, I knew the Hollies when I lived in England. So either of them will be a great pleasure for me to see.

What three Jimmy Cliff songs would you send people to who are just getting to know your music?

The movie ‘The Harder They Come’ and the title track, along with so many other songs on that soundtrack. But I would think because people are so familiar with that song and the movie, which was such a great inspiration, maybe that song. And then of course there is ‘Many Rivers to Cross,’ which is also one of those songs that touches so many generations. And an inspirational song like ‘You Can Get It If You Really Want.’ [Barack Obama] has used the slogan of “Yes we can” and got elected. And it’s always a song of hope and inspiration: “You can get it if you really want.” So I think those are three Jimmy Cliff songs that people would look forward to.

Wycliffe Johnson, an innovative composer and producer known as Steely, who held sway over two decades of reggae music, died on Tuesday in East Patchogue, N.Y. He was 47 and lived in Kingston, Jamaica.

The cause was a heart attack following pneumonia, said his daughter Kerry Johnson. He had moved to Brooklyn this summer for treatment of kidney problems related to hypertension and diabetes, she said, and died at Brookhaven Memorial Hospital several weeks after surgery for a blood clot in the brain.

The reggae world knew Mr. Johnson as Steely, a boisterous producer with a larger-than-life personality and a belly to match. Best known for his role in the team Steely & Clevie, he was equally influential in his early work as a sideman, and helped to transform reggae at several stages, from roots to dancehall to digital.

An expert keyboardist who worked with Bob Marley and Bunny Wailer, Mr. Johnson worked at seminal Jamaican recording studios like Coxsone Dodd’s Studio One, Lee (Scratch) Perry’s Black Ark and Sugar Minott’s Youth Promotion. By some estimates he participated in more sessions than anyone else in the history of reggae.

Born and raised in the same Trenchtown streets as Marley, Mr. Johnson was largely self-taught. When he was 12, the drummer Cleveland Browne, known as Clevie, invited him home for daily rehearsals with him and his brothers. “We basically learned together,” Mr. Browne said in a telephone interview on Thursday. “Steely became like part of the family.”

As a child, Mr. Johnson would hang around Channel One Studio in Kingston, fetching drinks for the influential drum-and-bass duo Sly Dunbar and Robbie Shakespeare, known as Sly & Robbie. When those two left Channel One, the band the Roots Radics, with Mr. Johnson as keyboardist and chief arranger, became Jamaica’s most in-demand rhythm section.

In the early 1980s Mr. Johnson and the Roots Radics pioneered the muscular, stripped-down reggae sound that would come to be known as dancehall, performing on records like Cocoa Tea’s “Lost My Sonia,” Freddie McGregor’s “Big Ship,” Yellowman’s “Zungguzungguguzungguzeng ” and Michael Prophet’s “Gunman.”

A few years later Mr. Johnson helped revolutionize the sound of reggae again. While other musicians resisted the digital tide of the 1980s, Steely & Clevie embraced it, pushing the technology of the day to its limits. At the studio owned by the producer King Jammy, in the Waterhouse neighborhood, the two worked with the engineer Bobby Digital and the songwriter-producer Mikey Bennett to record a vast catalog of hard-hitting “ana-digital” (part analog, part digital) instrumentals like “Punany,” “Cat’s Paw” and “Duck Dance” — all of which are still recycled by younger producers more than 20 years later.

Mr. Johnson’s digital bass lines and graceful keyboard riffs invested mid-1980s dancehall — in its so-called computerized style —with melody, groove and an unmistakably human touch. The two also laid down rhythm tracks for top dancehall labels like Penthouse, Techniques and Music Works. By their accounting, they worked on 75 percent of the hit reggae records of the late 1980s.

After Steely & Clevie left Jammy’s to start their own record label, bearing their names, in 1988, Mr. Johnson established the Silverhawk sound system, named after a favorite motorcycle. As a kind of mobile discothèque, the system offered a peerless selection of exclusive records, serving both as a promotional tool and as a laboratory for testing street-crowd reaction to songs being considered for release.

Mr. Johnson produced career-making records for luminaries like the crooner Gregory Isaacs and the dancehall star Super Cat, whose hit “Boops” spawned many imitations, including the 1987 Boogie Down Productions rap classic “The Bridge Is Over.”

Signing to a publishing deal with EMI in 1990, Steely & Clevie also collaborated with international acts like Billy Ocean, Heavy D, Caron Wheeler and No Doubt. They scored a Top 40 hit in the United States with their 1994 revamping of Dawn Penn’s Studio One classic “You Don’t Love Me (No No No)” and reached the Top 5 in 2004 with another vintage reggae remake, Sean Paul and Sasha’s “I’m Still in Love With You.”

Besides his daughter Kerry, Mr. Johnson’s survivors include four other children, Shae, Shanice, Daniel and Cailon, and his mother, Alice Johnson.

JOHANNESBURG — Three men accused of murdering the South African reggae star Lucky Dube were found guilty here on Tuesday, just hours after two of them tried to bolt from custody on the way back to their trial.

Mr. Dube (pronounced doo-bay) was an internationally famous musician, and his murder during a botched carjacking in October 2007 once again brought the appalling rate of violent crime in South Africa to the world’s attention.

A recording artist with a strong social conscience, Mr. Dube, 43, had worked with Peter Gabriel, Sinead O’Connor and other Western artists. He often sang about the evils of crime, of houses broken into and bullets fired, wanting criminals to see their misdeeds through the eyes of their victims. He was killed while dropping off his two teenage children at his brother’s house in Rosettenville, near downtown Johannesburg.

Mr. Dube left behind a wife and seven children. After Tuesday’s verdict was read, his wife was too emotional to talk with reporters, but his son Thokozani, who had witnessed the crime, said, “We can now have closure.”

More than a dozen armed officers oversaw the proceedings after two of the defendants earlier tried to escape while guards transferred them from a truck to the courtroom basement. One prisoner hit a policeman in the face with a brick, according to a police captain quoted in a local news account of the episode. Warning shots were then fired, and the defendants were subdued in a scuffle. They arrived in court with their heads bandaged.

The three convicted men, S’fiso Mhlanga, Mbuti Mabe and Julius Gxowa, will be sentenced after a hearing where mitigating evidence can be presented. The death penalty has been banned in South Africa, though the Dube case has been cited by those who want its return.

The nation’s homicide rate, while declining, is among the worst. In 2006, it was about eight times more than the United States’ and 20 times higher than Western Europe’s, according to Antony Altbeker, a criminologist. Electrified barbed wire surrounds many of the finest homes in Johannesburg. South Africa exceeds international norms in its number of police officers, and by some estimates there are more than four times as many private security guards as police officers, with most companies promising their clients “armed response.”

Criminologists have long puzzled over not only the nation’s high crime rate but also the unusual amount of homicide and torture that accompanies burglaries and carjackings.

Mr. Dube had been driving a late-model Chrysler luxury sedan. According to the trial testimony of Mpho Maruping, who knew the accused men, they had been looking for just such an automobile the day of the crime.

The three men did not realize that they had killed someone both famous and widely beloved until they read the newspapers the next day. They had thought their victim “was a Nigerian,” Ms. Maruping said.

The mood was jubilant at S.O.B.’s on Tuesday, even as the night dragged on without any sign of Mavado, the dancehall reggae star who was supposed to be there celebrating the release of his second album, “Mr. Brooks … a better tomorrow” (VP).

The Hot 97 radio personality Jabba was warming up the increasingly restless crowd, chatting about things he didn’t like (the New York Police Departmentement mayor) and things he did (smoking weed, seeing “big mamas” dance). When a meek-looking record-label employee offered copies of Mavado’s album for sale, Jabba jokingly encouraged people not to rob him.

On the whole it was an optimistic room for Mavado, whose 2007 debut album, “Gangsta for Life: The Symphony of David Brooks,” had the unmistakable stench of death about it. One of the most promising dancehall debuts of the last few years, “Gangsta” showcases a bulbous, throbbing voice equally indebted to war cries and devotional singing.

His new album couches its tragedy in slightly warmer arrangements, a concession, perhaps, to Mavado’s ascending star. In the last two years he has collaborated with G-Unit and Jay-Z.

At S.O.B.’s, he arrived with a bandwagon, which almost collapsed for all the weight on it. Mavado’s mentor, the dancehall superstar Bounty Killer, came onstage early in the set and periodically ate up large swaths of it, his natural charisma too large for the room. Tony Matterhorn displayed an easy way with melody. Wyclef Jean rapped in English, badly, and in Japanese,

amusingly (and also badly). The longtime pop-reggae star Shaggy performed approximately four seconds of “Boombastic,” his first hit, wisely understanding this wasn’t a room that wanted to hear much more. The Brooklyn rapper Uncle Murda performed a bit of his song “Murdera,” which takes its hook from Ini Kamoze’s crossover hit “Here Comes the Hotstepper.”

With a pronounced forehead, wide-set, deeply sad eyes and a modest demeanor, Mavado didn’t always stand out in this crowd. He’s best when incensed or malevolent, but here he caught the wave of good cheer, seeming more at home in bawdy material like “In Di Car Back” than in his darker work. (“Weh Dem a Do,” his signature song, passed by in a flash, though “On the Rock” had the appropriate mix of gloom and triumph.) In the middle of “So Special,” his latest deceptively soft hit, he switched over to “No Games,” the pleading reggae-soul number by the singer Serani, who had opened the show with a manic set, and who joined Mavado throughout the night.

Serani sings plaintive vocals on one of Mavado’s starkest songs, “Dying,” performed here twice, and he joined in on Mavado’s new single, “Again and Again.”

With eyes closed, Mavado sang: “No rest, forever weary/ My eyes stay blurry from my friends that I bury in the cemetery.” Finally, the room hushed up.

On one of Bob Marley’s greatest records, a 1975 live version of “No Woman, No Cry,” he sang of “good friends we have lost, along the way.” One of the best and oldest of Marley’s friends was Vincent Ford, known as Tata, who died Dec. 28 in Kingston, Jamaica. He was 68.

Writing credit and royalties for “No Woman, No Cry” and three other Marley classics, “Positive Vibration,” “Roots Rock Reggae” and “Crazy Baldheads,” went to Mr. Ford, inspiring much critical debate as well as a long court battle between Marley’s former manager and publisher, Danny Sims, and his widow, Rita Marley. Mr. Sims claimed that Marley registered his own compositions pseudonymously to evade contractual obligations. In 1987 a jury ruled in favor of the Marley estate, which retained control over the disputed songs.

Lost amid the hue and cry over the music was any sense of Mr. Ford himself, who died of complications of diabetes and hypertension, according to Paul Kelly, a spokesman for the Bob Marley Foundation.

Mr. Ford’s own story was dramatic, and was long entwined with Marley’s. He used a wheelchair for decades after losing his legs to diabetes, but according to a Jamaican newspaper, he saved another youth from drowning when he was 14. He was also responsible for saving Marley from starvation as a teenager. The “government yard in Trenchtown” described in “No Woman, No Cry” was No. 3 First Street, where Mr. Ford operated a simple kitchen, known as the Casbah, in one of several communal concrete dwellings built around courtyards in the public housing development there.

All-night rehearsals with the future reggae stars Bunny Wailer and Peter Tosh were routine at the Casbah, where Mr. Marley lived for a time and romanced Rita Anderson before their 1966 wedding. Today it is a museum, the Trenchtown Culture Yard, one of the few attractions that draws tourists into Kingston’s troubled inner city. The wooden table on which Mr. Marley slept and his Volkswagen bus were even visited by Prince Charles.

“Tata was an unbroken link to a generation, many of whom are now gone,” said Vivien Goldman, author of the groundbreaking Marley study “The Book of Exodus” (Three Rivers Press, 2006). “The last time I saw him he was going into a Marley family gig in Kingston, and he was just borne along on a wave of youth, all admiring him and understanding what he’d come to represent.”

Bernard Harvey, known as Touter, who played keyboards on the original recording of “No Woman, No Cry” and the rest of Marley’s 1974 album “Natty Dread,” said: “I could not tell you anything about the writing process. What people have to realize is that Bob was singing his life.”

The Marley historian Roger Steffens said that in a little-known 1975 interview for the Jamaican Broadcasting Corporation, Marley “basically admits that he really wrote the song” while tuning a guitar at Tata’s yard.

On the other hand, reggae is, essentially, a collaborative art form.

“Bob was a people’s poet who was very receptive to deft turns of phrase,” Ms. Goldman said. “Tata was a man whose mouth spouted founts of wisdom. That song may very well have been a conversation that they had sitting around one night. That’s the way Bob’s creativity worked. In the end it didn’t matter. The point is Bob wanted him to have the money.”

In the late 1970s, when Ms. Goldman sometimes stayed in Trenchtown, she had occasion to ask Mr. Ford point-blank: “Was it you?” She never got a straight answer.

“He was very mysterious,” she said. “He looked at me with a mischievous twinkle in his eye and said, ‘Well, what do you think?’ ”