Trench Town festival to raise awareness for Wailers 50 project

Reggae lovers are looking forward to the Trench Town Culture Festival on February 4 at the Vin Lawrence Park on First Street in Trench Town. The event, which is scheduled to start at 6 p.m., will feature acts like Lutan Fyan, Erup, and Earl ‘Chinna’ Smith. Other acts include J Written, David Slur, Queen Iminah, Anue Nahki, Marlon Brown, Vania Colours, Jonelle, and other special guests.

“It’s an interweaving with the new generation,” explained well-known entertainment consultant Maxine Stowe. “Two of the members of Wailers Trio, JWritten & Dahvid Slur, who also launched their solo careers last year, are part of a youth collective that is regenerating Culture Yard/Trench Town,”

Stowe said that the event is a collaboration of “Livingston Family members, Bunny and Bob’s sisters, Donna & Pearl, as well Danny, the last remaining brother”.

The concert will kickstart a fundraising campaign for The Wailers birthplace on 19 Second Street, which was designated a National Heritage Site in 2019.

“They all grew up there with Bob and Bunny,” Stowe said.

Stowe will be at the forefront of a collective rolling out of The Wailers 50 project.

“The project is celebrating the inaugural solo projects of Bob, Bunny, & Peter in 1976 in the same youthful way and development for this new generation of Rastafari Roots artistes,” Stowe said.

Evelyn Carridice, the sister of the late Bunny Wailer, is also playing an integral role. She was pleased that Trench Town officially opened Reggae Month 2026 with a ‘grounding’, a community-led cultural launch that underlined the incredible contribution of the Livingston family to The Wailers group.

“A central feature of the evening was the public grounding of Second Street, Trench Town as The Wailers’ Birthplace, presented by the Livingston family – represented by me, Evelyn (Donna) Carridice, and Pearl Livingston (Claudette Livingston), daughters of Thaddeus Livingston, and inclusive of our brother Danny Livingston, the last surviving son of the siblings,” Carridice said.

The launch was held on Sunday evening, February 1, at Joe Higgs Park, under the Trench Town Rocks banner.

The opening was presented in collaboration with the Trench Town Development Association (TTDA) and foregrounds Trench Town as a living cultural ecosystem, where heritage, family, and sound-system culture converge.

The Livingstons are clarifying the historical continuum that begins in Nine Miles, St Ann, and culminates in Trench Town as the site of formation, Carridice said.

“Nine Miles is where Bunny Wailer first met Bob Marley and where Thaddeus Livingston knew Cedella Booker. Thaddeus Livingston’s grounding as a Revival preacher, ganja farmer and trader, and urban entrepreneur informed a blended, multifamily household structure that incorporated Bob Marley into the Livingston family environment,” Carridice said.

The union of Thaddeus Livingston and Cedella Booker produced Pearl Livingston, the sister of both Bob Marley (through his mother, Cedella) and Bunny Wailer, (through his father, Thaddeus.).

According to Carridice, Second Street – at a government-owned building – became the domestic and communal space where Neville Livingston (Bunny Wailer), Bob Marley, and Peter Tosh transitioned from individuals into The Wailers as a group.

“While the Norval Marley/Cedella Booker lineage produced Bob Marley biologically, the Thaddeus Livingston-blended household produced the home, geography, and structure that enabled The Wailers’ formation,” Carridice said.

At the time of Thaddeus Livingston’s passing, 10 Darley Crescent was the sole property named in his will. Bob Marley is acknowledged as having assisted Thaddeus Livingston in fully owning that property, which also served as an additional meeting place for The Wailers, reinforcing the Livingston family’s role in the group’s early geography.

The sound systems featured on February 1 were Jah Love, Sizzla Kalonji’s King Tafari sound, and Skankadon Sound System.