Mamaa

Episode 4 of Reggae Pharmacy is now live on Mixcloud.

If you missed the show, here is another chance to spend 1 hour and 59 minutes with the music, story and legacy of Leroy Sibbles.

Honestly, Sunday feels like the perfect day to sit back, press play and get lost in some good Reggae.

The link is in the comments or search Reggae Pharmacy on Mixcloud and explore the previous episodes.

Nothing to see here.

Just an African woman appreciating the craftsmanship of a beautifully tailored outfit gifted by a dear friend.

Now excuse me while I head to the Pharmacy.

See you in a bit... Details in the comments

Skatta's dreams are international.
His debt is local🤣

Many years ago, my dad had a Japanese friend who absolutely loved Leroy Sibbles and I do not mean the usual kind of fandom. If you visited his home, you would think you had stepped into a Leroy Sibbles museum. The records. The photographs. The posters. The music playing from the moment you arrived to the moment you left. Everything pointed back to Leroy and with complete confidence, he would explain why no other artist in Reggae history mattered quite the way Leroy Sibbles mattered.

And because of that, it was only a matter of time before a debate broke out. I cannot remember exactly what started it but I remember how it ended. In the middle of all the back and forth, he said something that stopped the room. "Leroy Sibbles the vocalist is celebrated but Leroy Sibbles the bassist and arranger is a completely different conversation." At the time, I did not fully understand what he meant. Still, that sentence followed me for years.

Then, as the years passed and I went deeper into the music, I slowly began to understand what he was pointing at because there is a difference between knowing someone's name and understanding their weight. Most people know Leroy Sibbles as the voice behind some of Reggae's most beloved recordings. Yet behind that voice was a musician whose fingerprints were all over the Studio One era. As a bassist, arranger, harmony singer and talent scout, he helped shape the sound that would influence generations of artists.

And the funny thing is, I thought he was talking about Leroy Sibbles. Years later, I realised he was actually talking about how we remember people. We celebrate the faces. Sometimes we miss the hands that built the thing.

And that was his whole point.

Every Saturday I am live on Smailz Radio 98.7FM 🎙️📻

You are welcome to tune in from anywhere in the world. Archived episodes are also available on Mixcloud and you can reach me directly via email.Details are always in the comments

I wore this yesterday and somehow became the unofficial ambassador for Reggae in 3 different locations.

One compliment turned into a conversation,one conversation turned into a history lesson and before I knew it, I was introducing complete strangers to Reggae Sunday School.

I left the house to run an errand and somehow came back after recruiting new RSSians.

This shirt should come with a warning label.😁

ROOTS LEAGUE.

Details to get yours are in the comments.

Wherever your feet touch the Earth, we'll deliver it to you.

Skatta's relationship with truth remains complicated🤣

I have sat with this question for a long time and honestly the more I reason with it the more I believe the answer is both. The tension between the two is exactly the point.

Zion as a physical place has deep roots in documented history. For Rastafari it pointed powerfully toward Ethiopia, the land of Haile Selassie, the ancient kingdom of Axum and one of the few African nations that resisted formal European colonisation. That is not mythology. That is geography with a spiritual address. Artists like Burning Spear and The Abyssinians sang about Zion with the conviction of people who were not speaking only metaphorically.

But here is what I find equally true....The people who built Reggae were living in the yards of Trenchtown with very little reasonable expectation of physically reaching Ethiopia. So Zion also became something they could carry internally: a state of consciousness, a way of moving through a hostile world without being consumed by it, a daily practice of existing as though you already belonged somewhere better than where the system had placed you. That is not a compromise of the original meaning. It is the original meaning applied to the conditions of daily survival.

So when I hear a Roots Reggae song speak about Zion today I hear two ideas at once, the longing for a place that represents home and origin and the daily choice to live with dignity regardless of your coordinates.

Your answer to this question does not only reveal your relationship with the music. It reveals how you handle the distance between where you are and where you believe you belong.

Every Saturday I am live on Smailz Radio 98.7FM 🎙️📻

You are welcome to tune in from anywhere in the world. Archived episodes are also available on Mixcloud and you can reach me directly via email.Details are always in the comments 🌍

Skata : Me nah beg.

Skata 5minutes later: Anybody have data?

You know that feeling when you walk into an old house and immediately know somebody important once lived there? The paint may have changed. The people who built it may be long gone. Yet somehow you can still feel their fingerprints on the walls. I get that feeling whenever I listen to Reggae music.

Because the longer you sit with this music, the more you realize that some of its most important builders are almost invisible. We celebrate the singers and quote the lyrics, yet every now and then I find myself wondering about the people underneath it all. The ones shaping the sound while somebody else stood in the spotlight and that question eventually led me to Tommy McCook.

Now, Reggae has a habit of rewarding curiosity. You start looking into one song, then another musician, then an old photograph and before long you find yourself standing in front of somebody whose fingerprints are all over the culture. Tommy McCook was one of those people. Widely believed to have been born in Havana in 1927 before moving to Jamaica as a child, he learned tenor saxophone at Alpha Boys School before returning from Miami with a deep love for jazz and a musical education that would help shape Jamaican music.

And as it turned out, he arrived at exactly the right moment. In 1964, McCook helped form The Skatalites alongside Jackie Mittoo, Don Drummond, Roland Alphonso and others. According to McCook himself, the group had been discussing the name "Satellites" before he suggested "Skatalites." The band lasted only about 14 months yet those 14 months helped lay the foundation upon which ska, rocksteady and eventually Reggae would stand.

Which brings me back to that old house. The music is still standing. People still walk through the door every day yet not many stop to ask who poured the concrete. After The Skatalites, Tommy McCook went on to lead Duke Reid's legendary Supersonics and continued shaping Jamaican music for decades. 3 genres. Hundreds of recordings. A sound that travelled the world yet somehow many people know the music without knowing the man.

Tommy McCook.

Every Saturday I am live on Smailz Radio 98.7FM 🎙️📻

You are welcome to tune in from anywhere in the world. Archived episodes are also available on Mixcloud and you can reach me directly via email.Details are always in the comments 🌍