Professor Major - Meditation

Another music review while waiting for my African movies to arrive, as iv'e said before on here it's very pre-mature to declare the Reggae scene in Britain dead. While not being UK born this Jamaican imigrant is one of many reasons why i think it's very much alive. His brand of upbeat singjaying manages to stand out from the usual "Bobo Dread" artists who inhabits this subgenre and feels very fresh whit it's equal mix of love songs and RastafarI tunes.

We start out whit the title track, "Meditation" who is an introvert reflection over the trials and tribulations of his atempt at an career as an professional musician ( I shurely hopes he manages to become a household name among diehard Reggae fans because this guy got more talent than tons of his peers). It's like most of the songs on this album very catchy and whit a distinctive roots sound. Chances are this will find it's way into your head and stay there for weeks to come.

Next up is, "African empress" which start of a 6 song marathon dedication to proud, righteous nubian women. It's love songs for shure but whit a little more substance than your average R&B song and sung/chanted from a more spiritual perspective. They all sounds very rootsy and while all of them are good enough to listen to whitout skipping i'd say song 5, "You alone in my life" are the best of the 6. He has a flow that almost reminds me a lil bit of older toasters like "U-Roy" or perhaps "Tony Rebel", a very good and uplifting song!!! Perhaps 6 songs dedicated to the same subject is a little much but he does them good and get's away whit it.

By the time we reach track 8, "Nazarite vow" Proffesor Major is back in a more RastafaraI frame of mind  and tells us about how it realy does not matter what Babylon does or tries to do to him cause he's a Rasta and has taken the Nazarite vow. I like the trumpet in this song and enjoys this cd's return to a more spiritual vibe. Skip a few (excellent) songs and we get "Soon come", one of the albums highlights whit it's wonderfully repetitive chorus and lyrics about how Rastaman don't wear fashionable clothes like "Calvin Klein" etc but rather sticks to his turban and robe. What follows is the albums last song, "Ragga muffin" which is just one of many amazing and upbeat roots tracks on here, as always "Professor Major" has a flow to die for, he realy, realy has mastered his vocal talents.

Well, as you might have noticed i have nothing but praises for this album, it took me like 5 seconds of listening on cdbaby.com to make me realise i had to have this album. It seems to be a professionaly made cd-r and the price is a lil bit high (15$). In most cases i would be a bit dissapointed if i had spent that much on a cd-r but whit music this great i don't care. Lets just hope that "Professor Major" releases more albums, i would hate for this to be his only release.

African movies

A coupla million years ago I mentioned that i would start reviewing African movies on here but it never happened for some reason. I've just ordered a couple of Ghanian and Nigerian movies like "Spade" who seems to be an attempt at an American styled action movie and "Mountain of Evil" who seem to be a more horror themed movie and a few other titles.

I'm getting more and more into world cinema and is very excited to get these movies, one thing i think is very important is to order from a place only dealing whit legitimate releases. The African movie industry certainly is not Hollywood and needs all the financial support it can get. It's easy to find sites that sells bootlegs or to watch these movies free from streaming online sites but avoid that like the plague.

Go to sites like www.africamovies.com who guarantees that all the movies they sell are originals.

Future of this blog

Seem as if blogs not sharing 1 million mp3 files ain't being shown that much love or have that much reader participation, it would be cool to get some conversation and feedback going. If no one are that into the blog or what is on here I'm probably going to cut down on postings. It's not dead though, I'll keep things up.....

Outernational: A story about Trinity Sound System

 

As we all know by now, "Reggae" is a highly international genre nowadays and the days when 99% of all good Reggae came out of Jamaica is gone (although Jamaica still dominates). The culture of Jamaica has inspired millions over the globe, wheter it is music, religion or as whit the content of this book, "soundsystem culture", In this book we get to follow one of Sweden's premier soundsystems, "Trinity" and the 3 West Indian immigrants +1 Swede who runs it.

The focus of this book is on photos whit accompanying texts in both English and my native Swedish language, there is not a whole lot to read but whatever is there is well written and interesting whit individual chapters on the 4 members and some of their escapades such as a gig at a motorcycle club and a German club in Wupertal.One of hte guys in here, "Daddy Boastin" got his own musical career and has been a favorite of mine for over 10 years, something that def. ad's to the books value for me.I would not have minded more written content but whatever is there is good.

Technically speaking it's of an very high quality whit excellent color reproductions, great photos and the paper it's printed on almost feels like thin plastic sheets, have not come across anything like them in any of my other books. It's of course a hardcover book, no flimsy paperbacks on this book. Well, to sum things up, a nice and interesting book for anyone interested in Reggae culture worldwide, esp. if you're Swedish.

Outernational: A story about Trinity Sound System

Irie Up review

 

  

 

Finally got the "Irie Up" magazine in the mail and after having read it carefully I have the following to say about it. It's most def. good, you can tell that this is a "labour of love", coming from folks who are deeply immersed in the scene. It has a heavy focus on Soundsystems and the international, non-Jamaican part of the culture. There's features about German, Polish, Serbian and New Zealand Reggae and plenty of nostalgia about "the good old days" and a feature about reggae shops in Paris, France.

Over all i would say it's a high quality production (whit great layout and color pages) that is much recommended for the Reggae fanatics, if you just have a minor interest in the genre you might not like it quite as much as the die-hard fans out there. While being great and much recommended it's not 100% perfect, it lacks a bit of structure and I would have loved to see more artist features  and real articles that doesn't feel as much like a typed out conversations. More reviews would be great as well, there is some scattered through out the magazine but I would have preferred a regular review section.

But over all I would say this is a great effort and a very nice first issue, it has the enthusiasm of a "fanzine" but feels way more professional. Make sure to support "Irie Up", buy your copy of it and make sure to spread the word around, we need at least 1 English spoken magazine about Reggae. Iv'e scanned a few pages of the magazine so that y'all can make an informed decision on whether you should buy it or not, I have blurred out some of the texts though as I don't wanna share too much whit y'all. This is not a bootlegging blog.