Live Music: Spice had "flava" Nomaddz "settled" but the Diamonds "sparkled"at Jamaica Live

In any genre, bands or groups lasting at least a decade are considered "veterans" and those going past 25 years have usually already garnered some type of national honour.

what then, should we make of the Mighty Diamonds, who not only have notched their 50th year as a vocal trio, but, as evidenced by their headline-worthy showing at last Saturday's

Althea Hewitt

No-Maddz

"Jamaica Live"  Showcase at Boone Hall Oasis in Stony Hill, are still doing it at a level their younger counterparts  have to struggle to compare with.

With a truly vast catalog to work from, it was gonna hard to please everyone, but all the better known stand-bys were there, including "Right Time Come" and "I Need A Roof" along with the likes of "Juvenile Child" - not often heard these days, and the unshakably popular "Pass di Kutchie".

but more than the songs and their and their obvious quality, the Diamonds made each of these selections sound absolutely fresh, as if they were "hot off the press". Here on the stage were past masters of the music, veterans of countless stages and venues, but still filled with the verve and the overall love for the craft, and the audience returned that love in spades.

No less a compelling figure in roots music annals, Richie Spice took the stage in the wee hours of Sunday morning with a certain mysticism mixed in with playfulness. He jokingly chidd We the People Band leader Lloyd Parkes as "a old man, trying to keep up" and reeled off his own substantial catalogue with an understated panache that is all his own.

Now essentially a duo, No-Maddz are even more of a force to be reckoned with than before. Sheldon Shepherd and Everaldo Creary delivered a set that managed to combined both subtlety and force, crudity and class, without ever going above the heads of the audience or pandering to the lowest denominator.

True to its, billing, Jamaica Live as a night for bands, with at least four separate outfits taking the stage - We the People bookended the show, with opening and closing stints.  All of them made a positive impact, but perhaps none more so than Roots Impact, with a duo of upfront vocalists - neatly outfitted in matching "Bobo khaki" performing a slew of well-conceived and sometimes quirky originals. They would be joined, somewhat inelegantly, by spoken word performer Written, who acquitted himself of the rude entrance with a career-defining reading of " Strange Fruit" the anti-lynching anthem made famous by the late Billie Holiday.

Two charismatic young journeymen followed in their respectives sets. Esco Da Shocker, formerly one-half of hitmaking duo Leftside and Esco, brought a hard-hitting mix of consciousness and fun songs with an underlying roughneck vibe. Simon Bowden, of Skygrass made for a kind of Jamaican version of Coldplay's Chris Martin (not to be confused with our local namesake), accompanying himself on guitar, strutting across the stage and even hopping off onto the verdant space of Boone Hall to interact directly with the audience.

The interlude also featured a great impromptu performance from unbilled conscious warrior Kush Bashan, who had folks jumping to a lively snippet of his original, "We Deh Yah".

While not the only solo female on the bill (she shared that honour with the lively, almost raucous Monifa Goss of Rising Stars fame) Althea Hewitt made the event her own with a stirring and genuinely emotional performance that touched on the present social ills (violence against women and children; greed, disunity) whilst still bringing joy to all through her powerful, effervescent delivery and stage presence.

While some may clamor for a bigger turnout at the venue, the artistes can't really complain for exposure, thanks to a savvy social media/streaming strategy on the part of David White, conceptualizer, and his team. This sees the showcase presented as a television broadcast initially through Comcast, Verizon, Roku, Caribbean Media Corporation (CMC), South African Broadcast Corporation (SABC), with additional Platforms pending. Radio and social media coverage has been arranged through the Reggae Top 20 countdown show, broadcasting from Johannesburg and simulcast online on Toronto’s Ranks Radio, and London’s Kbit Radio London, reaching listeners from over 166 countries. Additionally, there is terrestrial broadcast from Zambezi FM- Zambia, which covers millions of listeners from Zambia, Namibia, Zimbabwe and Botswana, Kenya, Trinidad (Synergy TV and Radio) and Jamaica through Flow. The show was also video streamed online through Facebook, carrying not noly the onstage happenings, but the highly salubrious ambience of the Boone Hall venue, nestled in between the western hills of St Andrew.

All told, the night's offerings were well worth the cover price and there is every reason to have high hopes for the sustainability and growth of this series, a breath of fresh air in an increasingly barren local live landscape.