Music: the Radio Rise of Angie Martinez

- from CNN Money

Tupac, Biggie, Jay-Z. New York City radio personality, Angie Martinez, has helped put some of hip hop's biggest names on the map.

But her greatest success story is her own.

 Raised by a single mom in the New York City neighborhoods of Washington Heights and Brooklyn, Martinez began to get into trouble at age 15. While her mom worked, she spent her days drinking, smoking pot and listening to music with her friends. During that time, Martinez was absent more days than she was in school.

Hoping to turn things around, her mom sent her to Miami to live with an aunt. A few months later, her mother moved too after landing a job as programming manager at Miami radio station Power 96. Martinez got an internship at the station and discovered she loved the radio.

After she graduated high school, Martinez moved back to New York and got an internship with Hot 97. At the time, it played freestyle dance music. It would be years before the station turned to hip hop music and for Martinez to start hosting her own show.

Two big turning points in Martinez's career were leaving Hot 97 for New York's 105.1 and interviewing rapper Tupac Shakur. Martinez's interview with Tupac was so powerful that she feared it would further fuel the growing rivalry between the East and West Coast hip hop scenes and never released it in its entirety.

Now, at 45 years old, Martinez is known as "The Voice of New York." In May, she published her memoir, My Voice, which sold out immediately and was on the New York Times Best Seller list for two weeks.

This is Angie Martinez' American Success Story.

What are some of the biggest hurdles you've faced in your career?

Finding my self-confidence.

I started in radio really young. I was in the public and I was still learning who I was.

Now I know who I am and I know my strengths. I wish I had developed that earlier. I could have accomplished a lot more in my life.

What were your greatest personal successes?

Something happened to me in my 30s where I started to come to terms with who I was.

I had a better sense of who I was and to see the bigger picture of my life, instead of harping on all the things that slowed me down in my 20s. That was a big accomplishment.

Interviewing Tupac was a turning point. I realized that how I'd use my voice could really matter. Another moment was changing companies and leaving Hot 97. I had to leave the nest to become my own, fully. That gave me the confidence that my voice was my own.

And writing my memoir was a real milestone. To be able to look at my whole life and assess my challenges and my successes and to be able to give it to people in a way that they can find value in that for themselves, that's great.

Who has helped you out the most?

It all starts with my mom.

She's always been there. She's someone I can trust unconditionally and who's loved me unconditionally. When I needed some tough love she did what she was supposed to do.

I'm a really good judge of character and that's given me great friends, people that I can really be honest with.

People like Funkmaster Flex, and the other people that I worked with earlier in my career, I would not be here without them.

What would you say to a person who has no idea what they want to do?

I think that sometimes it takes people most of their life to figure out: "This is what I love! This is what I want to do!"

Just keep looking for it. There's opportunity everywhere.

Some people have a plan and they know what they want to do. That wasn't me.

But I knew I loved music and radio so I learned everything that I could about it.

Live your life with passion, and your work and passion may come together. But it's not by accident it's by showing up and over delivering.

You write that you had trouble paying your bills, even while working. You were actually evicted.

I think a lot of us just weren't taught about [finances.] It's not something that I blame my mom for. I think my mom was learning, herself.

I was young. I started working at the station in my teens with no real thought about how to handle my money.

I've worked with financial advisers and friends and I'm still learning, but clearly I'm not in the position where I was back then.

How do you define success?

I think success is when you're doing something that makes you feel fulfilled and when you're offering something to the world.

I have a good life, but I'm always chasing success and growth. I don't know if that's good. There's something to be said about that 70-year old sitting on a porch drinking lemonade, chillin'.

Is our country in a hopeful place or in a downward spiral?

There's going to be hopeful moments and there's going to be downward moments, it's an evolution.

Look at the racial issues in this country. I think they're getting worse because they're about to get better. People are just tired of the status quo in terms of how black and brown people are treated. Our time is noisy and complicated, but we'll push through.

What is your American dream?

I'm still figuring it out.

There's a quote from Tupac, "I'm not saying I'm gonna change the world, but I guarantee that I will spark the brain that will change the world." I feel like that about my life.

Music: Lefsetz "catches Fire" with Bob

Outspoken music commentator Bob Lefsetz recaps his slow burn to appreciating the music of Reggae King Bob Marley in this latest instalment of his letter


I heard this today on No Shoes Radio, Kenny Chesney's Sirius station that for some reason I can only get on my XM receiver but not my Sirius one. It's channel 62, I caught the press release somewhere and tuned in, I LOVE IT!

People's sensibilities are wider than the narrow channels programmers put them in. And listening to No Shoes you'll hear stuff as varied as "Paradise City," Bryan Adams, Pete Yorn, live Chesney takes and this.

Off of "Natty Dread," Marley's third album on Island and the third to mean absolutely nothing in America.

I had no idea how to pronounce it. Reg-GAY, like man on man love, or Reg-GIE, like the guy in the Archie comic books? And how would I know otherwise, I was living in a cultural black hole, Middlebury, Vermont, in the seventies, when we only got one snowy TV channel, never mind any FM radio other than the college station. No, I learned about Bob Marley and the Wailers, about reggae, in the press.

And there was a big campaign. I remember reading a story about reggae in the library. That's where you went to study, your own room was reserved for fun, and writing papers. Actually, you only went to the library freshman year, because then you realized it was a social scene, and if you actually wanted to get any work done you were better off claiming a classroom, they were plentiful and empty at night, I'd climb the stairs in Munroe Hall and have a space unto myself.

But if you wanted to read magazines, you had to go to the library. I'd sit in a carrel and catch up on popular culture, back before Google, before 24 hour TV news, before information was plentiful, when you depended upon "Time" and "Newsweek" to catch you up.

It was like looking through a telescope. Out there somewhere was a scene and I was not a part of it.

I didn't buy "Catch A Fire," which was a mistake, because shortly after release they changed the cover, it no longer opened in imitation of a lighter, it didn't move at all. You had to buy vinyl early, to get the disc in color, to get the gatefold cover, as time went on the label would want to save money and you could no longer get the original.

But I bought "Burnin'" and didn't understand it whatsoever.

You see there was a whole scene, with no radio airplay whatsoever, there was no frame of reference, I dropped the needle and just didn't get it.

But I kept buying and not understanding, until the release of "Live!," which finally captured the energy, all those tracks buried in studio production suddenly made sense. "Trenchtown Rock" taught me when the music hits you feel no pain. And despite still receiving no airplay, I now got it, I danced around the apartment with my hands in the air, that's the power of the sound.

And the fourth track in that 1975 Lyceum show was "Lively Up Yourself." But this iteration was totally different from the studio take I'd previously been unable to understand. The downbeat was deeper, Marley was unconstricted, he was closing the audience one by one, but didn't need their energy to display his, he was on fire.

That's right, Bob Marley & The Wailers had finally caught fire.

Most radio still missed it. There were no AM hits. What youngsters can't fathom today is the hit was irrelevant, if you listened to Top Forty you were out of it, all the action was over on FM, on the AORs, and although there were pockets of adherence, radio was still local, you never heard reggae in L.A.

But the tour buzz became deafening. Kinda like today's EDM shows. But instead of ecstasy it was all about the spliff, the marijuana, not the knock you over your head make you comatose stuff of today, sensimilla had just started to make inroads, but dope that made you high and instead of putting you to sleep made you want to experience the joy.

The English had always loved reggae. It had broken there earlier in the decade. But despite "My Boy Lollipop" being a smash here in the sixties, despite Johnny Nash having a big hit with the incredible cut in Jamaica "I Can See Clearly Now," despite "The Harder They Come" playing for over a year in cinemas, most people were clueless as to Bob Marley.

And then he died.

And soon everybody knew. It took people that long to catch on. Kinda like punk. Just when it looked like it was gonna fail, it was gigantic.

"You're gonna lively up yourself and don't be no drag"

It's noon. I'm on the 405. It's the studio version. But I'm immediately enraptured, I'm reminded of when the sound was enough.

"You lively up yourself for reggae is another bag"

We didn't go to the show for the production, certainly not to take photos, although as time wore on we wanted to be seen.

But home was a disaster, those who stayed in their residence were losers. It was all about going out, until broadband and Netflix and everything was reversed.

The movies were a religion.

Food was burgeoning, certainly in the metropolis.

And everybody went to the show.

Unlike today, you knew who was in town. Radio promoted the concerts, the paper listed them all, you lined up for tickets and if the act was famous you had a hard time getting in, if they were not you could see them up close and personal.

And it was all about the sound. It infected us. It made us move our feet, twist our bodies, love our brethren, all in thrall to the ringmasters on stage.

It was a religious experience.

"You rock so, you rock so"

Like you always did before.

MTV made it about what you saw as opposed to what you heard. No talents like J. Lo could have whole careers. Studio trickery could make anybody a star.

But there's still room for a band that can lay down in the groove and penetrate people's souls.

That's why people went to Fare Thee Well, it's what the Dead ethos is built upon.

But Bob Marley was for black and white, for everybody, he took this narrow sound and made it universal. Took a long damn time, but the sound has never died. You hear that reggae beat and your mood changes, your body starts to dip, you cast aside your everyday life and you move closer to the flame. Burnin' from an era when the earth was not run by nerds, but the cool people, who were more about feeling than bucks, who wanted to live a life far from the corporations, one based on instinct, exploration and communication.

You've got to lively up yourself.

Don't be no drag.

P.S. Later this afternoon I heard Busy Signal's reggae version of Phil Collins's "One More Night" on No Shoes Radio. Check it out, I'd never heard it before, the reggae beat adds a whole 'nother flavor: http://spoti.fi/1rV3yWw


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Media/Live Music: 52 Tuesdays Live.... with Michael "Mikey T" Thompson

Michael "Mikey T" Thompson

Think of him as a "radio postman" for lie music.

Since inaugurating his 'Live Tuesdays on-air performance slot On KOOL 97 FM some 52 weeks ago, veteran Michael "Mikey T" Thompson has not missed a single outing.

That amounts, in Thompson's humbly imprecise calculations, to "over 140 acts - solo and group, through the period." It also means well over a hundred hours of live music programming for the year at a time when radio offerings are sorely lacking in diversity and  - coincidentally? - live music is enjoying something of an underground resurgence, with several Kingston venues, new and old, offering a variety of live acts almost every night of the week.

But beyond the sheer numbers, Thompson, who was part of KOOL97 since the stations inception some 14 years ago (KOOLFM Anniversary celebrations are now close at hand), points out that the series offers musicians of various stripes "to  be heard solely on the basis of quality". That measure is, of course Thompson's to determine, but he makes it clear that he accepts no fees or other considerations from artistes in exchange for their appearance, only their time and energy.

And the roster that have responded is loaded with substance: Freddie McGregor, George Nooks, No-maddz, Coco T, Carlene Davis, Althea Hewitt, Pam Hall, Duane Stephenson and many more heavyweights. Alongsid ethese are up-and-comers like all-girl outfit Azadeh, Don Giovanni and Exile Di Brave and Lady Genius.

 Even more than the names, 'Live Tuesdays" has lanced the notion that Jamaican music is one-dimensional. The above-named acts and others (including Robert Dubwise, Pon Fyah band and Earth Kry) have laid down everyconceivable stage and sub-genre of Jamaican music, from mento to dancehall and beyond, incoporating, ska, lover's rock, rock, jazz, dub, EDM and other progressive offshoots.

To mark the occasion, Thompson will welcome another veteran outfit, Jamaica's undisputed champion showband, Fab 5 Incorporated, who will a special "....and Friends" edition of Live Tuesdays. Future episodes going into Year 2 will feature the likes of Mr Vegas, Uprising Roots and more.

And far from basking in the success, Thompson is hard at work, conceptualizing and planning some "special additions" to the format that he says he will elaborate on in short order.

So to those under the impression that the "house of Jamaican sound" is condemned and out of date, her comes Mikey T with a special delivery.  

http://www.amway.com/EMXGroup

At age IRIE22, IRIE Jam media looks to broaden its beat

IRIEJam co-founder Bobby Clarke

Having started with the audacious visit of NYC-based founder Bobby Clarke to the studios of Jamaica's IRIE-FM (then a still fledgling yet rising media entity) and the notoriously unaffected and straight-talking founder, Carl Young, broadcaster, content provider and event producer IRIE Jam Media has become the de facto voice of the Jamaican and wider Caribbean diapsora in North America.

having secured agreements to expand its footprint across the Continent and beyond, the founders (Clarke and Louis Grant) returned home  - and specifically to the Jamaica Pegasus in Kingston to host the various supports from corporate Jamaica and to cast their net for even more investment, emphasizing the great interest globally in things Jamaican/Caribbean and the close ties between Diaspora residents and their family/friends/contacts back on the Rock

Music: Its getting even better for Kemmy Be Good

Whether its interviews on leading media outlets here and overseas, or holding down top slots on industry charts throughout the sphere of popular music, Kemmy Be Good has a bright future in Dancehall, 

In terms of chart action, he is currently holding down second place on 2 Top Ten Charts. "Mash Up" has the number 2 spot on Vibeslink Radio TopTen Music Video Charts, while his latest single, "Competition" released barely a month ago is holding the Number 2 spot on SFDC RADIO Jamaica Rising Stars Chart, a UK-based chart 

And media hosts and presenters ahve been showing much love as well. Kemmy Be Good was interviewed on ZIP-FM as recently as March of this year as one on Jamaican dancehall's rising stars, and he also gave his growing legion of fans an update on his career to date.

 

Just over a week a go, Kemmy Be Good was Featured on NewsTalk93FM's popular current music programme,  "Nightly Fix" Other dancehall stars featured on the programme in recent times include Busy Signal, Lisa Hyper and Bridgez.

And he is scoring in the "riddim section" too. His "Nah Smile" Riddim which features Dappa Dapz, and Pritti Shu as well as the creator, is doing well both locally and overseas. It has been featured on numerous dancehall mixtapes locally and  as far afield as the "rising Sun" nation of Japan. That is not to mention the rotations on local outlets such as HITZ FM, ROOTS FM, throughout the Caribbean and even to Africa 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3CdI9loY44c

 http://sfdcradio.com/jamaica-rising-stars/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b1rrQGyYSeE  

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YBlaE9l-bdk

localjoe.myorganogold.com

 England and

America.

Business: SMEs in need of a "Katalyxt"

Business growth consultancy Katalyxt had its own expectations exceeded at the Knutsford Court in Kingston last Thursday when it presented a briefing on the way forward for small businesses.

Moderated by noted radio/TV commentator Cliff Hughes, the breakfast panel heard stirring contributions from the likes veteran agricultural exporter Rita Hylton, who painted a no-nonsense picture of the intricacies and challenges of maintaining supplies, educating producers and qualifying buyers.

Another ear-pricking contribution came from UWI lecturer Andre Haughton, who pointed out that corruption while inherently inimical for business as a whole, was actually spurring the progress of individuals and enterprises by virtue of the fact that it enabled businesses to acquire goods, meet orders, and retain staff.

Haughton also pointed out that conventional macro-economic metrics were insufficient in gauging economic activity or making a meaningful contribution  to national wealth.



www.localjoe.myorganogold.com

Music Biz: Media Houses on the Dock as JACAP Sues for copyrights

Music: Kemmy Be Good, Heard All Over

Its getting to the point where its hard to turn on (or punch in a radio station - terrestrial or online - without catching a track from Kemar White AKA “Kemmy Be Good” .

"Kemmy" who started recording music professionally in July 2013, has virtually been a one-man industry, releasing his own recordings on his Bling Facta label and spreading the word globally.

His debut track, a searing piece of social commentary titled "Country Unstable" picked up over 4000 views on You Tube within a few weeks and the artist has reports of airplay from many stations across the continental US. This initial success brought him to the attention of  “DJ Young Lion” from “Black World Sound” one o the top reggae/dancehall-oriented jocks in America, was Used to open THE UNDERGROUND EXPERIENCE WITH UNCLE EARL Radio Show, aired on  www.ultimateunderground.com, and also earned a feature spot on “Yardhype.com” on August 5, 2013. The subsequent music video was in rotation on local channels Hype TV and Cvm Plus.

 The DJ followed that up with “Move Like A Gig” which received similar media attention to the first, landing on FAME-FM's popular "Full House Fridays" and on US stations such as KJAG Radio, the midwest America-based internet radio station with over a decade in the business.  

And things are looking up for “Kemmy Be Good” even beyond those markets. He has just recently had the song "mash up The Place" nominated for Dancehall Song of the Year in Uganda, and has in fact been enjoying good rotation throughout East Africa, including also Kenya, Tanzania and Zimbabwe. Even further afield, his music has been picked up in New Zealnd, where heas also been the subject of radio interviews.

In addition, Kemmy has been blazing hs way through several live show stages, most recently being the popular Ghetto Splash event at the Waterhouse Mini-stadium. 

For his part, Kemmy states that his primary focus is "to put out relevant music that the people can move to even with the message in it" it is to this strategy that h attributes the media attention received to date, and what he expects to carry him forward in the music biz.

Current and upcoming projects include a riddim track, the "Nah Smile" riddim, and several production gigs and stage appearances.  

Cultivating Truth in The Soil of Corruption: The Agronomist

Broadcasters!

Think your job is hard? Try talking while your station is being shot up by high-powered rifles. Try remaining on air when the Government is bent on shutting you down, bent in fact on silencing you - permanently.

Such were the travails of the late Jean Dominque, the erudite, charismatic and ultimately fateful lead character in this prickly yet highly engaging documentary from long-time Haiti-watcher Johnathan Demme. The "Something Wild" director melds face-on interviews with footage in a manner that goes straight into the issue - Haiti's legacy of oppression and revolt - and never lets up. Also featured are Dominique's widow Michelle,who was herself integral in the harrowing process of establishing and maintaining the radio station, as well as other family members, former staffers and other personalities. we also see the arc of former Haitian president Jean-Bertrand Aristide, from influential priest to eventual President and then pariah.

Not all the interviews are in English and the director makes no attempt to either dub or sub-title the French and Kreyol segments. This might seem an irritant to the uninitiated, but watching the movie patiently, one will see the wisdom in this step as the over all spirit of the film will emerge even over the language difficulties. Also, the film seems to skim a bit on the Duvalier years, though we plainly see that at the beginning of his broadcasting career, the former agronomist (hence the title) is drawing the ire of both Papa and Baby Doc, and we are shown the latter ouster, aided and abetted as it was by the US.

The story that does emerge is one of massive unfulfilled potential, of promises unkept, and of a people held in suspense as power-seekers of various persuasions (of course the US is a constant shadow) carve up resources and suppress dissent.

Deserves to be viewed at least a few times, even now, roughly a decade after it was first released.