Stories by Mel Cooke

As the country's murder rate reaches gastronomical (yes, I meant gastronomical and not astronomical, as we are full to overflowing and totally fed up), I have waited for someone to get up and point the finger at the usual culprit, Jamaican popular...

One day a few years ago, I stood outside the Afrique pub on the lower part of King Street, downtown Kingston, and heard King Stitt talk about having to run from the police when he was playing sound systems in the earlier days of Jamaican popular...

In 1977, Marjorie Kay won a talent contest at the Spider Web on Eastwood Park Road, St Andrew, which led to her singing with the club's resident band. She had revisited that decade for her latest single, Visions, a remake of the Stevie Wonder...

There was a time when making a song meant assembling a band of musicians, rehearsing what was to be played (along with the vocalist), then playing it through all at once because there was no way to correct mistakes put on the tape.Over time, the...

It was not so long ago that dancehall gospel had its run-in with the section of the church which frowned upon the secular beats being used to transmit the Word of God. While I expect that there are still some who look askance at persons such as...

Among the many steps in the vinyl record's trajectory from cutting edge music storage and playback technology, speculation about its relevance in the digital age is (as stated on vinyl-record.co.uk) RCA Victor making the long-playing vinyl record...

The 2017 Jamaica Ocho Rios International jazz Festival is now on. Myrna Hague, who is central to the festival, told The Sunday Gleaner about her first foray into reggae.Myrna Hague's Melody Life album is an unusual project for the lady who is much...

In January 2015, when Tanya Shirley's poetry collection, The Merchant of Feathers (Peepal Tree Press), was officially presented to the public, music played a major role in the function at Lecture Theatre 3, Faculty of Medical Sciences, University of...

With rain on just about everyone's mind, when it does not end up in floods, it captures the artistic imagination in especially amorous ways. There are many images - lovers walking in the wet, oblivious to or even relishing the rain drops. A couple...

One week from today, the Musgrave Medal awardees for 2017 will have their citations read and medals presented in this year's edition of the annual ceremony in the lecture hall, Institute of Jamaica (IOJ), East Street, Kingston. Among those to be...

Garnet Silk recorded Like a Mother to Me, at producer Robert 'Bobby Digital' Dixon's St Andrew studio after he returned from his sole trip to the UK. It was an eventful journey, as after doing shows in London, Birmingham and Luton, Silk was held up...