Krista Henry
jamaicagleaner.com
For many persons, age is just a concept. Nowhere is that proven more than the local music industry, where countless entertainers are on a musical mission that spans their entire lives.
Retirement age is 60 and 65 for women and men, respectively, with early retirement starting at 55. Music, however, disregards the norm, making it one of the few professions with a long life span.
In reggae music, there is a long history of artistes who have dedicated decades to the music business, a number of whom started out as children. Read more…
Mirror,” “change your ways,” and so I changed my ways. And although I don’t believe I am the man in the mirror, I sent him a message and him didn’t come, so I would give him to Satan for changing his skin from black to pink. When him born pink? If Michael Jackson was black, he would be on my right hand still. Now, he is behind me, his fault, not mine. I give him a choice. I say, “You want to know Jesus Christ. I write it in a magazine, this is my number, call me here, and I will show you Jesus Christ, who you are imitating. I don’t get a reply. So I tear off my right hand and give him to Satan. So I put Haile Selassie I on my right hand instead of Michael Jackson.” 
In the steamy dancehalls of northwest Jamaica in the 1950s, Lee “Scratch” Perry was a teenager fresh from the sugarcane fields, scooping up prizes with his energetic renditions of dances like the Yank and the Mashed Potato to the hottest boogie-woogie and R&B tracks newly washed in from the nearby U.S. Half a century later, the tide has turned — as it did in the ’60s and ’70s — and it’s the rhythms of the Jamaican dancehall that are now storming the U.S. (and European) charts. Leading the charge are young guns like Sean Paul and Wayne Wonder, who are bending America’s native hip-hop with new sounds. And so Perry — at 67 still the inspired lunatic-producer of reggae — finds himself in possession of his first Grammy (for last year’s album Jamaican E.T.), and encamped at London’s plush Royal Festival Hall, where his three-week stint as curator of the 11-year-old Meltdown festival kicked off on Sunday. 
