Regal in purple, the ‘Queen of Reggae’ Marcia Griffiths held court inside the J. Wray & Nephew’s offices in New Kingston last Wednesday at the launch of the Marcia Griffiths & Friends concert scheduled for November 3 at the Royal Hope Botanical Gardens in St Andrew. The royal celebration will commemorate the Reggae Queen’s 60th anniversary in music, and she is promising that it will be a show like no other.
For an entertainer who has some 50 collaborations, Griffiths could host a days-long celebration just doing duets, and it was a testament to her goodness that Tony Gregory, her very first collaborator, was present, having driven in the pouring rain from St Ann just to be there. Another tribute came in the form of Nadine Sutherland, who stepped off the plane at the Norman Manley International Airport into the venue because she, too, had to be there. It was a night on which the past and the present collided with smiles.
Griffiths’s son, Taf, proudly listened as emcee extraordinaire, ‘Mr Yes Indeed’, Tommy Cowan, spoke of seeing his mother perform when she was just a 14-year-old girl. That was in the year 1964 at the Carib theatre in Cross Roads, “the number one place that shows would be held”. “A young lady at about 14 years old was called to the stage because of the introduction from the brother from a group called the Blues Busters.
His name was Phillip James ...
we called him Boasy,” Cowan said, all ears tuned in to him. He continued, “And we asked .