No-Maddz will debut their Jamaica 50-year anniversary song, Sort Out Yuh Life Jamaica, and nationwide campaign at Coral Cliff in Montego Bay at noon today.
The Dub Poetry group is known globally for their unique sound that comes from the fusion of several genres, underpinned with the strong influence of Jamaican roots music.
The song will be a vehicle for their ambitious but very welcome campaign to bring about positive change among Jamaicans. They want to spread that message using various forms of media as well as a series of islandwide concerts.
Supreme Ventures Limited (SVL), the corporate entity partnering with No-Maddz for the launch, is proud to make the campaign launch possible.
“We are facilitating their exposure with this creative venture,” said Sonia Davidson, SVL vice-president of marketing.
“We have partnered with No-Maddz in a number of their events since 2010. We facilitated them being the opening act for the Michael Bolton Concert at the National Indoor Sports Centre. We think this campaign is very ambitious but culturally relevant.”
Respected group
The four-man group of former Kingston College students Sheldon Shepherd, Everaldo Creary, Christopher Gordon and O’Neil Peart has become respected purveyors of the new music movement out of Jamaica, garnering growing legions of fans worldwide. However, according to Shepherd, this weekend will see the group taking things to an even higher level.
“Sort Out Yuh Life is pretty much a Jamaican quote. It is said in many ways, many directions and always with a positive vibe,” he said of one of the meanings behind the single to be released.
“It’s really a challenge to the individual to look within for nation building. It is a call for individuals to clean up and come back up clean, for us to stop asking what my country can do for me and start asking what I can do for my country.”
Sending the message
It is a message that the group hopes to perpetuate through the song playing on the radio, on billboards across the island, on the backs of buses, transcending language barriers as well as the diaspora.
“It’s about time,” Shepherd says. “It’s been 50 years. We are still young but if we don’t buckle our shoes and pull up our socks the country will not move forward and prosper. It is not about pointing fingers, it’s about taking responsibility,” he said.
Those are but some of the reasons behind this weekend’s press launch. “It is also about securing funding,” Shepherd said.
“Getting the message out on backs of buses, in time signals (on the radio) and staging 50 concerts across Jamaica can’t be done for free. It will need a budget.”
The press launch, he said, will also be used to appeal to sponsors to come on board the nation-building campaign, as well as to give people positive role models to look up to.
All members of the group are recipients of the prestigious Prime Minster Youth Award for excellence in the field of arts and culture, the highest state award for youths in Jamaica.
“We want to give the youth an image they can align themselves with, the message that you can do what you want once you persevere, but at the same time, not taking yourself too seriously.”
SOURCE: jamaicagleaner
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