RezaRitesRi.com

By Reza Corinne Clifton

(A slightly modified version of this article appeared in the July 21 edition of the Kent County Daily Times. Excerpts from it also appeared in a July 19 article in Motif Magazine)

(Reggae Singers Batch and Ras Attitude perform with raw talent and solid professionalism at Sound Session 06)

RHODE ISLAND-Charlestown, Pawtucket, Newport, South Kingstown, Providence; seaside, industrial, historic, rural, metropolitan. These cities are all characteristically different, but there is an unusual and striking similarity among them too: they nourish and support the state’s Reggae music scene, helping to sustain a musical genre born in Jamaica and still most notably associated with musical, cultural, and spiritual icon Robert Nesta Marley.

That’s right, here in the ocean state there is a noteworthy community of reggae music fans, as well as a base of current and former RI residents creating and broadcasting the music. Evidence of both of these phenomena could have been seen in the capital city this past Tuesday, July 18 at the Xxodus Café at the Providence Black Repertory Company, as part of the “genre-defying” diverse music festival Sound Session ’06, happening July 16-July 22.

Though a taste of jazz has been incorporated into every night of the festival this year, like the previous Sound Sessions and like every Tuesday at the Xxodus Café, the theme or primary genre of the 18th was reggae. And like last year’s Reggae-themed night, the artists brought in to perform alongside house disc jockey Corey Taylor, aka Blade Mon, were affiliated with California-based Lustre Kings Productions.

(Sonny Andrews of The Zioniers skillfully plays keyboard with his band The Zioniers and alonside singers, Batch and Ras Attitude)

Lustre Kings is basically a two-person team run by founders, Andrew Bain (aka Moon the Digital Ancient) and Corinn Haskill, with associates and partners consisting of other producers and artists that mix, match and “cross-promote each other”. This is not unusual, according to Bain, who notes that in reggae, relationships between labels, producers, and artists is much more cooperative by nature.

Bain, who is originally from Seattle, moved to RI in 1993 to attend Rhode Island School of Design. A disciplined and well-trained musician adept at the cello, guitar and more, after relocating to NY, back to RI, and then to Jamaica for a short while, Bain started the Lustre Kings label with a childhood friend who, like him, had become enchanted by the ever-developing sounds of reggae music.

Starting out by making productions/“riddims”/beats used and performed over by lesser known names in reggae, Lustre Kings has evolved, making beats for more well known and revered artists like Luciano and Sizzla. His ties to RI were never severed, though, despite his relocating. As a matter of fact, it is Boo Studios in Wakefield that Bain returns to regularly to produce, mix, and finalize albums. But his partnerships have not just reached back to us through the packaging of music, but also through bringing artists to perform here, like at Sound Session this year and last.

(The elder, Ras Ibeshee on bass and Ras Ibednego on guitar and single keyboard, both of The Zioniers, help provide outstanding, authentic island melodies and harmonies)

One example of this is with Batch (vocals), Ras Attitude (vocals), and the Zioniers (keyboard, bass, guitar and drums), professional reggae musicians from the U.S. Virgin Islands, St. Croix who have worked with Bain and Lustre Kings. They have all performed and recorded separately as well as jointly, creating a smooth, mature island sound evidenced by the professional, energetic, tender, spiritual, and uplifting performance they gave on Tuesday at Sound Session, to which audience members responded by dancing, swaying, applauding, closing their eyes or simply smiling. It helped that Taylor on the turntables and Didakan, a West-African and American drumming group set the mood and enlivened the crowd beforehand.

If you missed Tuesday’s show at the “Black Rep”, as I mentioned in the introduction, RI is filled with opportunities to take in reggae. The popularity and sustenance of the music have yielded a number of different club–and radio–disc jockeys like Taylor. One of the best known and most deeply entrenched here in RI is Peter Dante of the Reggae Showcase on Sundays, on the University of RI’s 90.3 FM WRIU.

Dante has been broadcasting reggae music on the station since 1982. In an interview earlier this month, Dante explained that “There was only one, one-hour [reggae] show on [W]RIU, on Fridays from 11:00 PM- 12:00.” His Reggae Showcase now airs every Sunday from 2:00-5:00, capping off an eight and a half hour weekend of reggae after two shows that air on Saturday; one is Taylor’s 11:00 to 2:00 show, Bladeconnex Radio, and the other is Matthew “Baby Matt” Swanson’s Exodus Radio.

All three of the WRIU DJ’s play out–Swanson at Jerkie’s Bar in Providence on Mondays, and Dante and Taylor on Tuesdays at the Ocean Mist by Matunick Beach in South Kingstown. But with a more than twenty-year history of providing RI’ers with new and classic reggae, as well as a radio forum that allows him to promote acts that come to the state, Dante’s role is more in-depth. He also regularly brings in reggae acts to “the Mist”, a popular ocean-view, beach-front venue, and helps to promote bigger name acts that periodically come to Providence’s Lupo’s (now located within a nightclub, Diesel).

His tenure in the business also explains why he is consistently chosen to open, host, and MC acts, like the Ocean State Reggae Festival happening at Ninigret Park in Charlestown this Saturday and Sunday on July 22 and 23. For reggae fans disinterested in the bar or club scene and more inclined toward the live music variation, this summer festival–and others that have come before it, but within the same season–is a welcome treat every summer.

Take a look at the website and you’ll see that the festival coordinators have worked hard to secure locally, nationally, and internationally known artists like the Black Rebels, Glen Washington, Israel Vibrations, and King Yellow aka Yellowman. Yet labels can be deceiving, and placing the word “local” by another festival performer, Pawtucket-resident Mark Messam, might be inaccurate.

(Classic Lover’s Rock Reggae singer, Glen Washington, adorns the crowd with his many romantic reggae hits.)

Internationally acclaimed reggae singer, Mark Messam (formerly known as Shadowz), was born and raised in St. Elizabeth, Jamaica till he moved with his two brothers to the U.S.—to RI—in 1990, when he was 14 years old. The son of a talented singer-songwriter who was highly revered for his “pretty voice”, Messam delivers pleasant, infectious melodies with a skill and quality that dates back to when he began singing at six years old, for a then-local church.

In St. Elizabeth, Messam’s family lived a few doors down from a bar that Messam found himself drawn to, due to the music coming through equipment that amplified the sound outside “for miles around. It wasn’t like it is here in the states; no one was going to come ask you to turn it down,” Messam explained on a stiflingly hot Sunday afternoon. Even though he was a youth, Messam began performing at the bar and, to his father’s dismay, adopting performing habits which mimicked the dancehall style that was becoming more popular at the time; dancehall’s cadence and subject matter are generally more similar to hip hop than to traditional reggae.

Ambitious, and addicted to performing, Messam sought out fellow musicians and producers as early as he could upon arriving in the states. Finding a few producers in Boston willing to take a listen, more than one had the same advice in those early years: “focus on your singing [instead of the dancehall style].” One producer went a step further, suggesting that Messam try to write his own music to truly stand apart from other artists who depend primarily on doing covers. In following this advice, Messam has gained acclaim beyond the local scene, working with producers like Lustre Kings on songs like “No Politics,” “How Long,” and “End of Story”, which have been regularly aired AND frequently requested in places like Jamaica, England, Portugal, New York, and of course here in RI.

Though crediting the tranquility of RI (in comparison to the energetic New York life) with why he was able to write so many songs, Messam knows that, like Bain, he may need to leave RI. For now, though, RI is lucky to house a great talent like Messam, while reggae lovers are glad to have Sound Session, the Ocean State Reggae Festival, and the various dj’s, clubs and bars across the state offering such a diversity of options at their finger tips.

For more information about the local reggae music scene: www.providencesoundsession.com for information about Sound Session ’06; www.oceanstatereggae.com for more information about the Ocean State Reggae Festival visit; and www.wriu.org for a schedule of reggae shows on WRIU.

Reza Corinne Clifton is a community organizer for high school reform at RI Children’s Crusade for Higher Education. She is also a freelance writer whose articles can be seen in The Warwick Daily Times, The Kent County Daily Times, The Providence American Newspaper, Motif Magazine and at www.RezaRitesRi.com. She can be reached by emailing rezaclif@aol.com.

By Reza Corinne Clifton

(A slightly modified version of this article appeared in the July 19 edition of Motif Magazine)

(Mark Messam in his writing/working space, Pawtucket, RI; Mark’s wall of pride: seven records representing the three labels/producers with whom he first worked)

RHODE ISLAND-Far away from the bars, dancehalls, and hotel lounges in Jamaica, reggae music lives and thrives here in RI. This should not be a surprise given the success and popularity of the music internationally. On the other hand, there are specific reasons that reggae remains alive and exciting in RI, like the annual, summer Ocean State Reggae Festival at Ninigret Park in Charlestown, coming up this year on Saturday and Sunday, July 22 and 23.

Take a look at the website and you’ll see that the festival coordinators have worked hard to secure diverse sponsors, inform and update the inquisitive, and, of course, to book a variety of acts; diehards will be especially excited to see Glen Washington, Israel Vibrations, and King Yellow aka Yellowman.

But the success of a festival like this, and often for visiting artists in general, also comes from the support and participation of area artists and promoters. I talked to two RI’ers filling these roles this year: 90.3 FM WRIU’s well-known, disc jockey, Peter Dante of the Reggae Showcase on Sundays, and up and coming, internationally acclaimed reggae singer, Mark Messam (formerly known as Shadowz).

If you live in RI and regularly listen to reggae music, there is a good chance that you have heard of or heard Peter Dante. Dante has been broadcasting reggae music on 90.3 FM WRIU, which is the University of RI’s radio station, since 1982. At one point, explains Dante, “There was only one, one-hour [reggae] show on [W]RIU, on Fridays from 11:00 PM- 12:00.” His show, The Reggae Showcase, airs every Sunday from 2:00-5:00, now capping off an eight and a half hour weekend of reggae after the two shows that air on Saturday.

Though he’s been playing all over RI since the 1980’s, Dante primarily dj’s out at the Ocean Mist in South Kingstown, sharing Tuesday nights with fellow WRIU DJ, Corey Taylor aka Blade Mon. He also regularly brings in reggae acts to the bar, which can be a popular venue for many reasons including the obstruction-less, beautiful ocean view available to patrons who walk out to the bar’s back deck.

Notwithstanding different trends in reggae music, and despite awareness in the difference between he “a middle class white man,” and the often impoverished, average [Afro]Jamaican, Dante has stayed committed to sharing reggae events and broadcasting the most traditional, spiritual, and melodic forms of the music, old and new. And people are appreciative of Dante, evidenced by the invitation he received to again be Master of Ceremonies of this year’s Ocean State Reggae Festival, a task he has performed in the past.

Though he has amassed fewer years of experience than Dante, Jamaican-born, Pawtucket resident Mark Messam does not need to fear that reggae listeners—in RI or otherwise—will be forgetting his name soon. The son of a talented singer-songwriter who was highly revered for his “pretty voice”, Messam delivers pleasant, infectious melodies with a quality that began developing back in St. Elizabeth, Jamaica when at six years old, he started singing for a then-local church.

In St. Elizabeth, Messam’s family lived a few doors down from a bar that Messam found himself drawn to, due to the music coming through equipment that amplified the sound outside “for miles around. It wasn’t like it is here in the states; no one was going to come ask you to turn it down.” Even though he was a youth, Messam began performing at the bar and, to his father’s dismay, adopting performing habits which mimicked the dancehall style that was becoming more popular at the time; dancehall’s cadence and subject matter are generally more similar to hip hop than to traditional reggae.

Messam and two brothers moved to the U.S.—to RI—in 1990, when he was 14 years old. Ambitious, he began meeting and performing for producers as early as he could, and more than one had the same advice: “focus on your singing [instead of the dancehall style].” One producer went a step further, suggesting that Messam try to write his own music to truly stand apart from other artists who depend primarily on doing covers. In following this advice, Messam has gained acclaim beyond the local scene, to have songs like “No Politics,” “How Long,” and “End of Story” regularly aired AND frequently requested in places like Jamaica, England, Portugal, New York, and of course here in RI.

With a number of new singles, proven quality on past ones, and the skills of a well-trained voice, Mark Messam’s Saturday performance at the Reggae Festival will sure to pleasantly surprise those unfamiliar with his music—and his live performance skills—while reaffirming what others may already know: an up and coming reggae star is here among us in RI.

For more information about the Ocean State Reggae Festival visit www.oceanstatereggae.com. For more information about WRIU, visit www.wriu.org, and to hear a sample of Mark Messam, visit www.studioxproductions.net.

Reza Corinne Clifton is a community organizer for high school reform at RI Children’s Crusade for Higher Education. She is also a freelance writer whose articles can be seen in The Warwick Daily Times, The Kent County Daily Times, The Providence American Newspaper, Motif Magazine and at www.RezaRitesRi.com. She can be reached by emailing rezaclif@aol.com.