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AMAZING
CARIBBEAN CHRISTMAS
Horace Peterkin, an undergraduate of University of the West Indiesand a graduate of Cornell University [with top honors from both institutions in Hotel Management] is the longest serving Manager with the Sandals Resorts group. He serves in many civil and community Associations [also currently the president of the Jamaica Hotel & Tourist Association], but still find time for his passion- music and has written nearly 200 songs since he started writing as a hobby in 1987. His songwriting triggered by the tragic death of his youngest sister [Pasty] in a car accident, started with a ballad titled “Can we meet” which went to the Top Ten on the Jamaican chart in 1987 and made the Singer ET Webster a household name in Jamaica. He produced a Sandals album which sells at the resorts and did his own album entitled “Reggae My Way” in the late 90s which is still a hot seller in Jamaica. However, Horace describes this Christmas CD Album titled “The Amazing Caribbean Christmas” as his most inspirational work to date. He explained that the project started with a dream while attending a conference in St Lucia at one of the Sandals resorts December 2004. “Yes crazy as it sounds I woke up at about 5:30am on the 10th day of December 2004, literally singing the title song “Caribbean Christmas” It sounded so sweet in my head I decided that I was going to record it for Christmas 2005. Two months later he heard the 19year old keyboard player Odean Anderson “letting loose” in an impromptu rainy day concert at his hotel and approached him for Help. Anderson worked with Horace and his kids at Peterkin’s home using his daughter as his pianist. This sparked off a week of inspirational writing at the end of which Peterkin wrote this entire CD Album. Then luck intervened, first in the form of one of his hotel department heads (Aubrey Williams) who brought his sound engineering skills to the project. Williams also recommended one of the most talented Jamaican [Gilton Smith] a producer/Engineer himself who brought to the project four of the singers on the album (Karell Wisdom, former back-up singer with Shaggy) Lisa Davis University graduate and part-time, singer, Clive ‘Jabez’ Provest-A Gospel Singer with in own album, Kimbelee Bent-Free lance soloist with a number one song for six weeks in Jamaica 2003/4. Peterkin sang two of the songs himself and recruited two of his Sandals Montego Bay Staff C Smith and Anne Marie Christian and Jamaica’s Classical singer Commander John Mc Arlanel, to complete the Album. Together the Jamaican ensemble created the most beautiful totally original Christmas Album in the last 20 years. All the songs were written by Horace Peterkin, all instruments were played by the gifted Gifton Smith and all the musical arrangements for the Background singers. Peterkin has dedicated this album to his 7 and 5 year old daughters Bianca& Paige who also performed on the Album, to his wife Dominique and his then month old son Chad who inspired the song titled “Sound of Christmas” [Christmas in the air]. |
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THE BLUES BUSTERS MEMORIAL COLLECTION
From the early 1950’s into the 1970’s the honey toned songs of theJamaican duo, THE BLUES BUSTERS, Phillip James and Lloyd Campbell, filled every wedding party and romantic event in the Caribbean and beyond with their special brand of R&B music that would pre-date the explosion of Black American R&B that would come to be known as soul music. Fans of the Busters would recall hits such as ‘Behold’ ‘Wide Awake In A Dream’ and ‘How Sweet It Is’. By the late sixties the Busters were being compared to and sometimes mistaken for a sensational new Motown duo, Sam and Dave, when indeed it should have been the other way around. The good and the bad of it was that Philip James and Lloyd Campbell were way ahead of their time, a dilemma that befalls the pioneers of many fields of endeavor. The Blues Busters, lauded as true greats by both Sam Cooke and Otis Redding, singled out by Bob Marley as “my favorite group,” would write, sing and record extraordinary rhythm and blues music, ‘Caribbean Soul,’ right at the dawn of the Caribbean music industry, receiving no real financial rewards for their pioneering work and unprecedented accomplishments. By The mid 1970’s the great music of the Busters would be washed under the inexorable tidal wave of roots reggae music unleashed by Marley, Peter Tosh and others, riveting the attention of the world on a much more political and hard edged sound emanating from the ghettos of Kingston, Jamaica. Lloyd and Philip would find themselves increasingly sidelined, impoverished and bitter. Then into their lives would come a man named Jack Plummer, a diehard Blues Busters fan, a music business animal with single minded drive and a plan to rerecord twelve of the Busters’ greatest hits, with new arrangements and a fresh new sound, hoping to win for them a whole new generation of listeners. The inclusion of Plummer’s photograph on this CD jacket is a tribute to his stunning commitment and determination in bringing this vision to fruition. The man Plummer chose to arrange and produce the precious material was Kingston born, Mo-Bay grown Delroy Baker, aka Del- Baker, a multi- skilled music maker who had toiled in recording studios in JA and the US, who works fluently in reggae, R&B and gospel. The effort spanned fifteen years and would cost upwards of $100,000 USD. By the early 1990’s and before the project could be polished and released, Phillip then Lloyd would both die, but not without the assurance that their legacy was in capable hands. Plummer would die in April 2008, having invested a good deal of his lifetime in working on this project. But before Plummer departed he would pass the masters into the hands of Del Baker, charging him with the duty of finally bringing the rejuvenated Blues Busters home to their public. The release of this collection of Blues Busters greatest hits heralds a new dawn for these unique Jamaican music pioneers, a cause celebrate for music connoisseurs everywhere. Sanctified Records International hopes that it will spark a rebirth of a Caribbean cultural institution, the wonderful music of Philip James and Lloyd Campbell, the amazing Blues Busters. Part of the proceeds from record sales will go to the BLUES BUSTERS MEMORIAL FOUNDATION, to be donated to the education of Caribbean children. Isaac Fergusson. |
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Ben-Jammin
At a time when poetry is being used in a most perverse manner,at a moment in history when rhythm and rhyme is being used to present and promote the lowest and most vulgar of human experiences, the work of the Reverend Benjamin Martin is at the same time refreshing and redeeming, bringing hope that the spoken word may once again sprout wisdom, insight and societal rejuvenation. There is no talk of pimping women, gratuitous violence, big drug money, bling bling and ghetto glory -- the staples of Hip Hop, today’s commercial poetry. Instead, here wrapped in music is the uplifting story of a people simply and beautifully told. The struggles of our slave ancestors to break out of bondage, the heroics of our heroes from Sojourner Truth and Harriett Tubman down to Martin Luther King and Malcolm X. The battle for civil rights and the right to vote, the struggles of a people for self respect and dignity, the ongoing war to reclaim our communities from racism, wanton violence and black on black brutality. Benjamin Martin’s poetry is poetry as poetry was meant to be, a repository of culture, a mesmerizing conveyor of history. This is poetry that needs to be heard, to be absorbed, to be enjoyed. Upon hearing Benjamin Martin for the first time one wonders – where was the man, this voice, all these years and from what distant region did he suddenly emerge? Yet everything about this poet and his poetry is as comfortingly familiar as the warm embrace of a old jacket or the comfort of an old shoe. The music that accompanies his lyrics remains understated, embellishing the story and aiding its flow yet never intruding upon the chatty narrative. His voice is unpretentious; he is a neighbor giving a bit of advice, a barber shop regular relating a little history. Everything Benjamin Davis says is so profoundly true, it is our own lives being revealed to us one lyric at a time, poignant yet soothing, bitter yet sweet. |
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