Ooh, another excellent review, this time from Black Music specialist, Kevin Le Gendre writing here for Jazzwise Magazine. Those of you who attended the Catch A Fire talk at the British Music Experience at the very start of the Lively Up! Festival will remember Kevin chaired an eminent panel of Tony Platt, Gary Crosby and Brinsley Forde talking about the making of Catch A Fire and its global impact.
Like everyone else who went to the London Catch A Fire live show, he had a fantastic time!
In 1973, when Bob Marley & The Wailers cut Catch A Fire, a landmark album not just in reggae but modern popular music, Jamaica as a sovereign state was just over a decade old. No greater celebration of the country’s 50th anniversary of independence could be conceived than in the form of Jazz Jamaica All Stars’ take on that chef d’oeuvre, because, to a large extent, the ‘small island’ has grown up with that original rebel music, so proud and defiant in tone, as an unofficial soundtrack. The re-imagining is about scale. Read on…
