The writers of Reggaelifestyle.com will not be updating the website with any new posts temporarily. This is being done in order to channel all time, effort and resources to the major website of the Heatray Media website group Jamaicapage.com and a few of it’s upcoming projects.

Reggaelifestyle.com will return in the near future to continue it’s goal to provide information about what is happening on the reggae scene in Jamaica and as we grow we will expand and cover the hot reggae spots and events all over the globe such as New York, Miami, London, Yokohama, Tokyo and other places.

A big thanks to all those who have supported this website and we’ll be back to serve you again soon!

On December 6th 2008 thousands of party goers and reggae music fans from all walks of life will converge on the Liguanea Club on Knutsford Boulevard. It’s A Reggaelution is a new event that is expected to be a yearly affair. In it’s inaugural staging the likes of Buju Banton, Etana, Taurus Riley and Roots Underground will be the headlining acts with Arif “Supa Coop” Cooper & Delano from Renaissance sound system present to ensure that there is never a let up on the vibes and musical excitement.

Master chef Chris McCurdy of Oregano caterers will be in charge of food preparation which is expected to be traditionally themed and world renowned decorator Jackie Tyson is expected to transform the Liguanea Club venue and immerse patrons deep into the Reggaelution.

UnitedReggae.com is a very popular online reggae music and entertainment magazine. The United Reggae Awards is a fan voted award hosted by UnitedReggae.com that invites website visitors to the website to vote on and recognize those working hard to keep Reggae music vibrant.

Voting for the 2008 awards has opened and any recording released between 1st January 2008 and 31st December 2008 is eligible for the 2008 awards and voting closes January 31 2009.

Vote and Win

Vote for your favorite artists and win a selection of albums, singles, books and DVDs. The 1st prize: an amazing selection of albums, singles, books and DVDs worth 100 €. The 2nd prize: a great selection of albums, singles, and DVDs worth 75 €. The 3rd prize: a big selection of albums, singles, worth 50 €.

CLICK HERE TO VOTE

VP Record’s popular reggae music compilation series “Strictly the Best” has received a new volume. release. Strictly The Best Vol. 39 contains 17 of the most well received reggae and dancehall songs in recent months.

Tracks such as “Overcome” by Movado, “Another Bill Again by Tony Rebel, “Nuh Linga” by Elephant Man and “Love You Like That” by Beres Hammond do well to offer a varied serving of Jamaica’s music that will please any fan.

Track List

1. NUH LINGA - ELEPHANT MAN
2. BACK IT UP - MR. EVIL & SEAN PAUL
3. PLAYING GAMES - SERANI
4. GIMME LIKKLE - BEENIE MAN
5. SWEEP - ELEPHANT MAN
6. MUS COME A ROAD - MR. VEGAS
7. OVERCOME - MAVADO
8. WINNER - KONSHENS
9. SORT DEM OUT - DEMARCO
10. I AM NOT AFARID - ETANA
11. ANOTHER BILL AGAIN - TONY REBEL
12. LOVE CREATED I (MARCUS TEACHING) - TARRUS RILEY
13. JUST AS I AM - L.U.S.T.
14. LOVE YOU LIKE THAT - BERES HAMMOND
15. BROKEN MELODY - TESANNE CHIN
16. RIDE OR DIE - CE’CILE
17. TIC TOC - BUSY SIGNAL

A stalwart of Jamaica’s music industry, Alton Ellis is dead. Mr. Ellis, who was one of the key contributors to the development of the ska and rock steady era, died Friday night in a London Hospital. Mr. Ellis who was 64 had been battling cancer for several months. Alton Ellis is generally revered as one of the greatest and most soulful singers Jamaica has ever produced. The singer was born in Kingston in 1944, and grew up in the Trench Town area as part of a musically inclined family.

In his early teens, Ellis was one half of the duo “Alton & Eddie” with fellow singer Eddie Perkins. In 1958, after winning a prominent talent show, they recorded the single “Muriel,” for Coxsone Dodd at Studio One, which became a substantial hit. Not long after cutting the follow-up “My Heaven,” Perkins left for the United States, leaving Ellis to establish himself as a solo act in Jamaica. In 1962, Duke Reid took Ellis to his Treasure Isle label where he mined several of his best known hits recording with a backing trio, The Flames which included his brother Leslie Ellis.

The hits “Girl I’ve Got a Date”, “Cry Tough” and “Rock Steady”, which lent its name to the newer genre marked his tenure with the Treasure Isle label. As rocksteady dominated the Jamaican airwaves for the next two years, Ellis continued to score hits for Treasure Isle, working with artists such as Lloyd Charmers, Phyllis Dillon and The Heptones. The “Mad Mad” riddim, first recorded by Ellis in 1967 would later be recycled in more than one hundred other songs. This constant reinterpretation and referencing made Ellis a major but little-known influence in the trajectory of dance hall, reggae and hip hop.

He moved to England in the 1970’s and established his own Alltone label, which he devoted to both new recordings and compilations of his early classics. In 2006, he was inducted into the International Reggae and World Music Awards Hall Of Fame. He made several guest appearances on the popular “Stars R Us Shows” and as recently as this June was the star performer at several “Get Ready to Rock Steady concerts” put on by the Ministry of Information, Culture, Youth and Sports at the National Indoor Sport Centre.

His smooth consistent vocals will be surely missed.

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Check out the video for Beres Hammond’s “I Feel Good” off his album A Moment in Time now available for digital download or in stores October 14th.

The new hit-making force in Jamaican music doesn’t live in the steamy downtown ghettos Bob Marley made famous but on a leafy residential road high on a hill here, in the upscale neighborhood Havendale, St. Andrews. Just 18, Stephen McGregor, also known as Di Genius, is a member of one of reggae’s reigning families: the clan of the veteran singer Freddie McGregor.

Stephen McGregor in the Studio

Big iron gates slowly swing open to reveal a yard with a raised, shaded area designed for playing dominoes. Inside a large villa narrow wooden stairs behind the living room lead up to Big Ship Studio, named after Freddie’s 1981 worldwide hit. With its richly colored walls hung with framed awards and its big black leather couch, Big Ship feels like a cozy clubhouse outfitted with huge speakers and a mixing desk. Here Stephen, who is known as the studio’s Captain, swivels around in an office chair, punctuating a chat by flicking a fader and unleashing yet another monster hit like Sean Paul’s “Watch Dem Roll” and “Always on My Mind,” his collaboration with Da’Ville.

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Askmen.com recently had an interview with world famous Dancehall artist and Jamaican Sean Paul entitled 13 Questions With Sean Paul.

Askmen.com: On behalf of AskMen.com, I want to congratulate you on all your success so far, especially for The Trinity topping the reggae charts. So tell me about the album…

Sean Paul: My latest album is called The Trinity, and it is an album [that was] three years in the making… it’s also my third album. It represents the young entertainers and producers of Jamaica. So, that’s the reason I called it The Trinity. Everybody who appears on the album is an entertainer or an artist who’s been in the game for over five years, so I feel confident in their work… I was living [in Jamaica], I was looking at the tasks I had to accomplish to produce a new album, and wanted to give people back the same energy and synergy… I wanted to know, “what’s up,” and when I looked around, I saw the young kids from Jamaica. They reminded me of myself 10 years ago. So I’m working with them right now on this album.

Sean Paul

Askmen.com: I was wondering why it was so important for you to produce The Trinity in Jamaica, but if you have more to say on the topic, then go ahead.

Sean Paul: Yeah, yeah! Jamaica’s musical influence is big, especially in the past five years in the game… we’ve influenced a lot of different forms of music, and people and genres are saying “respect” to it. I’m loving that, I’m loving that it’s becoming something on peoples’ albums. But one thing that is a dark side of that is that none of these people go back home to Jamaica to do it… and I find that if you wanted to get so-called crunk music, you find Lil Jon to work with him, and if you want a more R&B song, you check Pharrell and the Neptunes for the hip-hop, and that’ll sound more R&B and smooth. So I come to Jamaica to produce The Trinity — not to just hear it and try to do it back. So that’s what I’m doin’, I’m giving respect back to these kids. Now I’m not sayin’ that everybody in the world can’t produce dancehall, but these kids are the current vibrancy of what’s doing in Jamaica — that’s where I come from, man, so I have to give back to them.

Read full interview

Yeah!! Christ feed the multitude wid only one loaf a bread

Christ feed the multitude wid only one loaf a bread!
Poor people there is something for you dont let the pressures of the system
Get upon ya head, Poor people there is something for you

Mankind cares not for his sisters anymore, still there is something for you
Writen in the the book of live we shall live forever more,
There will be something for…

Rasta works a manifest an it a blossom an a bloom,
Nature always run it course the tide is rising wit the moon,
It only take a spark to put a fyah to da fume,
What is hidden in the dark shall be revealed so very soon,
Tell Pharoah free the prisoners from the dungeon an the doom,
Tell di youths fi natty-dread an babylon put dem inna platoon,
Di trials an di perils deepa dan di blue lagoon,
Dem nuh wan fi nuh dem history yuh nuh see say dem a goon

Christ fed the multitude wid only one loaf a bread! Poor people
There is something for you dont let the pressures of the system
Get upon ya head, Poor people there is something for you
Mankind cares not for his sisters anymore, still there is something for you!
Each an every time yuh see we forward offa tour, there will be something for…

Jah gave Moses 10 commandments upon two tables of stone,
Led Israel out of Egypt an den promise them a home,
Samson slew the Philisteens wid a donkey jaw bone,
An david slew goliath wid a two two wey crome,
Blessed be da man wey walketh not inna de war zone,
Blessed be di man wey hair natty nappy an grown, blessed be di herbs
Wey keep we higher, nappy an stone, Fyah fi a man wey se’dung inna
Babylon throne, curious woman go a dance an lef dem pickney dem alone,
Cannot tek care off ya’self de gidian ready nuh roam,
Population unda pressure still dem have more man a clown,
An always tell dat which has been lost has not been found.

Christ fed the multitude wid only one loaf a bread! Poor people
There is something for you dont let the pressures of the system
Get upon ya head, Poor people there is something for you
Mankind cares not for his sisters anymore, still there is something for you!
Written in the book of life we shall live forever more..still there is something.. (Aye)

Christ feed the multitude wid only one loaf a bread [x3]

A new and highly anticipated book with detailed information and over a hundred documenting the birth and rise of Jamaica’s dancehall culture will be available next month.

Dancehall: The Story of Jamaican Dancehall Culture - Book Description

This definitive study of the 1980s Jamaican Dancehall scene features hundreds of exclusive photographs and an accompanying text that capture a vibrant, globally influential and yet rarely documented culture that has been mixing music, fashion and lifestyle with aplomb since its inception. With unprecedented access to the incredibly exciting music scene during this period, Beth Lesser’s photographs and text are a unique way into a previously hidden culture.

Dancehall is at the center of Jamaican musical and cultural life. From its roots in Kingston in the 1950s to its heyday in the 1980s, Dancehall has conquered the globe, spreading to the USA, UK, Canada, Japan, Europe and beyond.

Dancehall is a culture that encompasses music, fashion, drugs, guns, art, community, technology and more. Many of today’s global music and fashion styles can be traced back to Dancehall culture and indeed continue to be influenced by it today.

Born in the 1950s out of the neighborhood jams of Kingston, Dancehall grew to its height in the 1980s before a massive influx of drugs and guns made the scene too dangerous for many.
This jam-packed visual history and text tells the story from its roots to its heights from that rarest vantage of the true, respected insider. In the early 1980s, as Jamaica was in the throes of political and gang violence, Beth Lesser ventured where few others dared, and this book is a never-before-seen record of the exciting, dangerous and vibrant world of Dancehall.

Writer and photographer Beth Lesser lived in Jamaica in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Her previous book, King Jammy’s (2002), a profile of the innovative Dancehall producer King Jammy, was described by Peter Dalton, co-author of The Rough Guide to Reggae, as “the one essential book on reggae.” She currently lives in Toronto.