New York, NY (Top40 Charts / Sounds & Pressure) After an absence from the Jamaican music scene for over 3 years, Toots & the Maytals will grace the stage of the first Ska and Rocksteady music festival, presented by
Sounds & Pressure, to be held in Kingston, Jamaica, the birthplace of these two powerful genres of popular world music.
Iconic Jamaican music legend Toots & the Maytals, has joined the list of stellar performers who will be entertaining the Ska, and Rocksteady "massives" expected at the Ranny Williams Entertainment Centre in Kingston,
Jamaica for the 1st Annual One World Ska & Rocksteady
Music Festival, on Saturday, November 26th. Toots' career has spanned over five decades as an internationally respected music legend with over 35 albums and countless singles released.
Toots began singing in church as a youth in Jamaica, before forming 'The Maytals in 1962, at the age of 17. Toots & The Maytals have been credited with more No.1 songs on the Jamaican music charts than any other artiste. Toots has recorded for some of Jamaica's leading producers including, Clement "Coxsone" Dodd,
Leslie Kong,
Prince Buster, Chris Blackwell, Byron Lee and Warrick Lynn. Toots has also recorded and performed with international superstars including Willie Nelson, Bonnie Raitt, Eric Clapton, No Doubt,
Jeff Beck and Keith Richards.
Fans of great Jamaican music are expected in numbers at the One World Ska & Rocksteady Festival on Saturday, November 26 to hear Toots & the Maytals perform such hits as 54-46, Bam Bam, Sweet and Dandy, If You Act This Way, Daddy, Fever, and It's You.
Other performers on stage will include The Skatalites, the originators of Ska, Soweto Ska Band, one of the leading European Ska bands from Spain, Marcia Griffiths, formerly of the I Threes, Leroy "Heptones" Sibbles, B.B. Seaton and the Gaylads, U Roy, Derrick Morgan, the King of Ska, Stranjah Cole,
Lloyd Parks and We the People, Brooklyn Attractors, a scintillating New York based Ska band, and Jamaican based Sparrow
Martin and Skasonic, Yard Beat, Earth Cry, the Alpha Boys School Band, and surprise guests.
Sound
System selectors are
Dexter Campbell, the Ska Professor, and Roy
Black of the Saturday Night Alternative. There will be two tours, one on Saturday morning to Culcha Yard in Trench Town, that gave the world
Bob Marley and the Wailers, and on Sunday afternoon to the Downtown Kington Reggae
Music Heritage Sites, 16 historical places in downtown Kingston where the music evolved.
On Sunday morning there will be a symposium on the originators of Jamaican music highlighting some of the significant contributors to Jamaican music such as Ernest Ranglin, Headley Jones, Bunny Wailer,
Janet Enright, Chris Blackwell, Lascelles Perkins, Sonia Pottinger, and Bunny and Skully. Two documentaries on Jamaican music will be shown on Sunday evening at the
Jamaica Music Museumin downtown Kingston. Contact soundsandpressure.org, and for ticketing, touchstoneticketing.com.
