Those Alpha alumni who bought instrumental range & prowess to Ossie’s elemental drum sessions (horn players Roland Alphonso, Cedric Brooks, Rico Rodriguez, Tommy McCook and more) would go on to craft ...

Count Ossie and his band got their first taste of national limelight at the Vere John’s Opportunity Hour talent show in 1959. Despite opposition, rumba dancer Margarita Mahfood demanded that ...

This is the 52nd in our daily entertainment series highlighting 55 Jamaicans who broke down barriers and helped put the country on the world stage. Each day, one personality will be featured, cul ...

This is a reissue of the 1975 album Count Ossie made with his Rastafarian drummers and saxaphonist Cedric ‘Im’ Brooks’s group The Mystics. It’s a groundbreaking, majestic work, by turns ...

★ ★ ★ ★ ☆Bob Marley made the music of Rastafarianism a staple of beach-hut cafés from Cornwall to Goa, but a rather more eccentric figure is hailed as the true pioneer of the movement.

Rastafari: The Dreads Enter Babylon 1955-83*,* Soul Jazz’s most recent in a line of high-quality compilations, provides a window into Kingston’s past, drawing a line directly from Rastafari to ...

The Skatalites, the Baba Brooks Band, the Granville Thomas Orchestra, Carlos Malcolm and the Afro-Jamaican Rhythms, the Soul Vendors, Count Ossie, the Maytals, the Ethiopians, the Wailers, Don ...

Count Ossie played this music publicly, resulting in the spread of the Rastafarian message. This type of music requires the use of three types of drum: the bass, fundeh and peta (repeater).

Ahead of a special performance at Kings Place’s Luminate festival later this month, London jazz outlier Theon Cross takes Stewart Smith through his 13 favourite records, from Stevie Wonder to Kano via ...