Interview: Professor - Professing The Madness [Reggaeville.com]

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Interview Harrison Stafford

Harrison Stafford Interview by Valentin Zill / Portraits by Franck Blanquin

Interview Harrison Stafford

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Professing the madness He is the lead singer of the jazz-infused reggae group Groundation, a clear favorite of most reggae journalists. He has recently released his first solo album under the name of Professor, a nickname that stuck to him ever since he taught History of Reggae Music at Sonoma State University in CA. Time to sit down with the genius! He has a lot to tell, ranging from his trip to Israel and Palestine, Madness, recording at Harry J’s with some of Bob Marley’s musicians, Groundation’s upcoming album, his documentary Holding on to Jah that earned rave reviews all over the world, Bob Marley’s role in reggae music and much more. Curl up on your couch and enjoy!

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You‘ve just released your first solo album, Madness. How was the idea to create those songs in Israel and Palestine and to record them in Jamaica born?

I really didn‘t set out to do it. I set out just to try and get a perspective of the Palestinian‘s struggle and what the families in West Bank were facing.

So initially, there was no music involved. Because we have travelled and performed in Israel several times, and of course being a Jew growing up in Hebrew school and these things, Israel was always a close thing to heart. Been traveling there and back. So I really wanted to see from the opposite site what was going on. And it really affected me very deeply. Inside the liner notes to Madness, it talks about when I met this particular Palestinian poet in Ramallah. I told the poet, I said I play music, I play reggae music. And right away the poet was like „mh, OK“. And I said you know reggae music? He was like „I know reggae music, I know Bob Marley.“ And I could tell that he didn‘t like it. I said what‘s going on? He said „Let me ask you this. How come Bob Marley is so zionist in his

Interview Harrison Stafford

message?“ I really understood immediately what he was talking about. When you look at the lyrics of reggae music, of roots reggae music, it sounds almost like zionist literature of the 19th century, Theodor Herzl, you know. „We know where we‘re going, we know where we‘re from, we‘re leaving Babylon, going to our father‘s land.“ So I saw what he was saying, and I didn‘t like the fact that he had such a negative outlook on reggae. It was the first time I ever met anybody who said I know Bob Marley, I know reggae and I don‘t like it because of its message, it‘s negative message. What?

Usually everyone realizes it‘s got such a positive message. When I came back from Palestine, it was very impactful on me and I had written down maybe 40, 50 pages of my travels around the cities, Hebron, Nablus, Qalqilyah, and these places.

I didn‘t know what to make of it. But I had all of these songs on my iPhone. I had all this music as I was going about Ramallah and all these late at night singing into my phone. So I said wouldn‘t it be great to go to Jamaica and record it with all-Jamaican, all-Rasta musicians and doing roots

Interview Harrison Stafford

reggae music as clean as 1978, but having the message be about Palestine, having the message be about that struggle that‘s going on. Maybe the perspective is more about the Palestinians and the occupation than it is about Israel and their homeland. I thought it was kind of good to do. If nothing else, I wanted to be able to hand the album to that same Palestinian poet, have him listen to it and say „oh wow, reggae music and Rasta is talking about me and my life! Great!“ That‘s kind of where it came from. It never came from OK, I‘m gonna go to Palestine, I‘m gonna make an album about it. Or I‘m gonna do my first solo album, I‘m gonna go to Israel and Palestine and make an album and do that. No, it all came afterwards.

Did you face problems as a Jew in the West Bank?

In all honesty, I was not traveling around there outwardly as a Jew. I had my Palestinian kafiya on. It wasn‘t like I was going door to door shaking hands, telling everybody that I was a Jew. Because yeah, it could be very dangerous for you. In Ramallah, there was an old man who had a juice station. And he had his juice station open until ten p.m. at night. So I would always be coming in to get fresh juice, fresh squeezed pomegranate, orange juice and all these things.

And his kids were there. His kids would be always looking at me, „father, what‘s this, what‘s this?“ And then he says „he‘s an Irish Muslim!“ (laughing). That‘s what he turns to his kids and tells them. „He‘s an Irish Muslim!“ That‘s great.

I‘ll just have some juice. You know, the people who I sat with in their houses, like you and I sitting right know, they knew I was a Jew. Because of my U.S. passport, I could come into Palestine.

For Israelis, it‘s forbidden to go to West Bank.

So for all my Israeli friends, they were all like „oh my God, please, when you come back, tell us everything you see, tell us what‘s going on!“ Because even though they‘re neighbors, there is such a big disconnect between the societies. And with the disconnection, you can really breed hatred, you can really have this animosity. Just like when you go to a place it‘s very easy to be racist about somebody or some people, when they‘re not around. And rumors are able to fly. „They‘re like animals!“ Because no one knows

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any Jew, or no one knows any Palestinian. All of these stereotypes and all of these blatant labels that are not honored, they get to spread, they get to spread very easily and people get to really embrace them. I mean the same thing in Germany happens with the Jews and things.

When people don‘t really have close relationships with other people from different societies, they‘re able to formulate all of these falsehoods. „Oh, they‘re dogs, they‘ll just take everything from you!“ You‘re able to really instill that in their minds and they can pass it on to the next generations. So that‘s the dangerous part. So it was nice to be able to try and be, if nothing less, try and be an in-between from the Israelis and the Palestinians. A small, little, thin wall divides the two societies, but they‘re very separate. So it was very intriguing to be able to learn from both sides. And it impacted me. And that‘s why the album is called Madness. It really showed to me the difficulties that we face in this life, the difficulties that we face in trying to overcome certain scars of history. And the way religion can blind people, the way you might adhere to this old, spiritual cause, thousands of years ago. But in your actions, in reality, in this life, you tend to be closed. You end up not being able to see what‘s happening now. Because you‘re really living very ancient, you‘re living a book that‘s very old. It‘s tough. Whether it‘s Islamic fundamentalists, extremists, or whether it‘s Jewish settlers... Their psyche is not happening in 2011.

Their psyche is about an old book and about the coming of a messiah.

When you talked about your experiences in the West Bank with your Israeli friends, did that change the way they perceive their neighbors?

It did, it did for a lot of them. Actually a lot of my Israeli friends met me at the airport, because I only had one day in Israel coming from West Bank. I was in Palestine, I had one day in Tel Aviv and then flew out. So a lot of my friends had met me at the airport and were just like „tell me what you saw, and what this and that“. Yeah, for a lot of people it was an eye-opening experience. I hope the music can touch more people, because before I went to West Bank there was a lot of conversation about it. And because I only

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had a short period in Israel afterwards, there wasn‘t enough time to go see everybody and tell them all what happened and what I saw. For the few, for the handfuls who were there at the airport it was something to... You know, these are already people who are liberal thinking, who are wanting a society of equals, who want justice for everybody. So it wasn‘t necessarily the rightwinged religious fundamentalists. It wasn‘t those people I was sitting with. So I hope that they hear the music and I hope the next time that we sit together we can talk a little bit more about it, because it‘s important to see that really besides all of these leaders and besides all of these really religious ultra kind of conservative outlooks, the general populations, they want peace. They want to see societies that are full of prosperity and hope. And that‘s one thing I was trying to find when I was in the West Bank, was hope. As I was telling the Israelis at the airport: there is no hope in Palestine. There is no hope in Palestine. You talk to the younger generation, you talk to people who are my age, who are in their thirties and what not, maybe just graduating from university, teaching in Nablus University and doing these things. They look and see the young kids who are ten, eleven, twelve years old. Kids who don‘t remember anytime of peace between the Palestinians and the Israelis. People who only remember the time of the second Intifada until now, which has been occupation, walls, has been putting people in prisons and this kind of things. I didn‘t find what I was looking for. It was challenging, honestly, it was challenging.

When I first went into East Jerusalem, into Palestine, what you would call Palestine, because that would have been part of the British mandate for a Palestinian state, East Jerusalem, when I went into those neighborhoods, I said hey, I‘m a musician.

I want to find Palestinian musicians. And right away this elder Muslim man comes to me and says „No no no, that is a sin. You‘re not supposed to be here. There‘s supposed to be no music.“ And I was like oh shit! Did I come to the wrong place?

What do you mean? Music isn‘t a sin! For me, it‘s crazy to think that. I understand, in the Qur‘an, when it was Muhammad‘s time, and people were rallying around the Caaba stone in Mekka,

Interview Harrison Stafford

and they were worshipping all the idols through music, and all of these false gods... So I understand why the Qur‘an says these things. But when you apply them to life now, and to the music that we do, I think that you‘re, no man, wrong! Music is not a sin! Music is the greatest gift of human kind. That was one perspective that shows you that these people who are in their ultra- orthodox, closed mind, it‘s really hard to shed light and to open up their thinking. It‘s difficult. And it might need those people to pass on. But the hope is that the generation coming will be a better generation who knows these things and really has these type of dreams of a balanced society. But like I said, I don‘t know if I saw that in Palestine. I saw kids who are angry, man. Kids who are upset because their brothers were taken away at nighttime or their father was killed in the street. People who had vengeance on their mind. We have a song Here I Am. It‘s talking about that on the Groundation album Here I Am. When people thirst for vengeance, it‘s hard, it‘s hard to really get their minds to change and see hope and prosperity.

You went to Jamaica later to record Madness, working with legends like Horsemouth, Flabba, Dalton Brownie, members of the Abyssinians, the Congos and many others. How do you got the connections to work with them?

Well I got those connections for years and years and years. From Holding On To Jah time, Congos I‘ve known since I was a beginning teenager, fifteen, sixteen years old, Cedric Myton and all those people. It‘s just from the years and years of traveling back and forth to Jamaica and the fact that I do Groundation, the fact that I do the music.

When I was younger it was just kids playing in St. Ann‘s Bay, you know. But as the music develops and you‘re in Kingston more and you‘re in Tuff Gong and Harry J‘s and you do work with Horsemouth and you tour around the world and you see Flabba with Israel Vibration all the time...

He and I struck up a friendship maybe twelve years ago. It just became the opportunity. The music that was written, it has a different intent then the Groundation work. Lyrically and the whole point, the whole perspective of the album, it has enough, there is enough there to try and digest. So the music itself is very simple, it‘s very

Interview Harrison Stafford

straight ahead. As opposed to the Groundation work, which is very big in its musical construct. In its arrangement, the Groundation stuff is a whole different world. So it was like an opportunity to be able to record these simple songs in a more straight ahead fashion. So who better to do that than Horsemouth and Flabba, Dalton Brownie, Obeah, all these great people. I have known them for some time. Dalton Brownie got on the record, I didn‘t even know he was on the island of Jamaica until maybe six hours into the session. I was recording on the analog, on the two-inch, you know, but the analog two-inch in Jamaica is dead.

To try and find a machine that works, I went to all the studios in Jamaica and found one machine and had to have that one shipped across town to Harry J‘s. So I crawled waiting to get the tape machine, all the lines and all these things, we were waiting outside for hours. The session was supposed to begin at ten a.m., and we started recording at six p.m. Horsemouth and Flabba, Obeah, they were just sitting in the yard for hours and hours and hours. And I would come check them, sorry you guys, we‘re tryin‘ to fix it. They had no problem!

They were like „No man, don‘t even worry about it. We‘re here!“ Great man. So by six p.m., Dalton Brownie just happened to drive into the lot and I said oh Dalton, you‘re here! Come on and play, we haven‘t recorded one thing yet. So right when he arrived, tape machine started working, start recording, just after that. That‘s it, man. Those are the right people. And you can hear it in the music.

The music has a kind of fun celebration. It‘s got a good vibe to it. You can tell that we didn‘t go in there and record the drums, record the bass, record the piano, record the vocals. You can tell that we were all together, playing the songs. We were all feeling it. It‘s great. I‘m really happy because we‘re gonna be playing three shows in August for the Professor project. One in Belgium and two in France. For that, it‘s gonna be Horsemouth on the drums, Flabba on the bass, Dalton Brownie on the guitar, Obeah on the keyboards - we‘re gonna be all together, live, for a few shows! The other guys just came naturally. The song Madness, originally it was a one drop song when Horsemouth and I played it in Kingston, just he and I. (Sings it while imitating the beat.) And we started recording it, and I started playing the song, Horsemouth all of

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a sudden started going (imitates a bass-drumheavy dancehall beat). What‘s going on? Alright.

So the song got a whole different feel. And once it was recorded, I knew right away to go talk to U-Roy and get him on this thing. Just because of what Horsemouth did in the moment, it just changed the tune. Changed the vibration. And URoy was the only person who could sit that. And the same thing for the song Right On - Winston McAnuff was the person I was hearing on it forever. The same thing with of course Abyssinians, Bernard Collins and the song Rollercoaster.

Sometimes you write songs and you hear it right away. You hear the end thing. It might be me, it might have been even me in the West Bank singing into this (shows his iPhone). I could still hear it as its final thing. OK, know this this this.

These people, these musicians, these singers.

And you really feel it. And to see it manifest is great. Now the album is released - it‘s great man.

It‘s great to see a vision from A to Z. It‘s great to see it all the way completed. People have great visions, and they make steps along the way.

But it‘s really when you complete it, that really makes it, it really makes the difference. The most difficult thing is to complete it and to say it‘s done, here listen to this. How many people do you know who have tried music and they‘re always working on the album, they‘re always re-

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cording songs... Yo, just put something together and put it out! It‘s done and I can move on to the next one. That‘s the biggest challenge with any kind of art. It‘s that you don‘t let the artistic thing carry you away into never finishing.

Same thing with academics.

Yeah, for sure! Especially when you‘re on large, big projects. You have to remember Z, you gotta remember the end (laughing). And then the same thing with Holding On To Jah, on the documentary and all that. We could have been filming that forever! At last there was a moment where I talked to Roger Hall, the director, and said hey, let‘s make the movie. Because how many great singers are there from the ‚50s and ‚60s and ‚70s? You could be in Kingston forever interviewing people and talking about this and that. So at a certain point, hey, we got the film, let‘s finish.

Your approach when recording Madness was really different from the Groundation projects.

Yeah, it was very different in a certain sense.

Interview Harrison Stafford

But in a second sense it‘s the same. You have your friends, you got all your musicians around you. For us, in Groundation, we record all analog on tape machines. But in California it‘s much easier, because the studios, they have upkeep.

They have engineers who make sure they‘re working still as opposed to in Jamaica where no one has touched it for fifteen years. So it‘s much easier to do what we do with Groundation.

But yeah, it was very different because again, Groundation is such a big production thing. We have Dave Chachere and Kelsey and Jason on the horns, me, Kerry and Kim, everybody singing lead vocals. The arrangements are all five, six, seven minutes long, and they have really intros, segues and difficult time signatures... It‘s a bigger, a larger complexity to the ideas. Whereas the Professor‘s stuff, the complexity is already built in the situation. The complexity between the Palestine and Israeli societies, they exist already. You don‘t need to make the music into something... You know, make the music as clean as possible, that way people will begin to digest

Interview Harrison Stafford

the larger information. The Groundation stuff is a while, man, it takes. All the mixing... The Professor‘s stuff - yo, Jamaican style. We recorded everything in five, six days. Mixed the album in three days. Finish the mastering in a day. Just bam! Everything quick. But the Groundation stuff - we‘ll spend two days mixing one song. Just to get it, you know. For us, it‘s very important.

Again, it‘s that completion, it‘s that going to the end of the alphabet, the last letter. When we release an album, we got no problems. It‘s done.

But until that time, yeah man, we‘re gonna be working to be sure it‘s the best possible. And a lot of times, some of the grand ideas in Groundation, they are very difficult to materialize. There are some things that we‘ve tried on records that are very risky. Whether it‘s the time, whatever it is, it‘s hard to see it. It‘s hard to see it blossom into what you had always heard it to be. Some of the ideas might be so big that you needed more time to really get it exactly as you wanted it. But the Professor‘s stuff, the ideas and the musical structure - very simple reggae music, get the people who do it, and do it well. And you could do it very quickly.

Is recording with Groundation a democratic process?

Yeah. I mean a lot of that stuff comes before that, a lot of that stuff comes of your arrangement and your forethought. By the time Ruffus - the drum man -, Ryan Newman, Marcus, myself - by the time the four of us get in there and we‘re recording the songs, the four of us are all good.

We‘re on the same page. Marcus and I need to finish the mixing and the mastering. Marcus and I need to carry the work to the completion.

But Ruffus, Ryan have already given it the stamp of approval, by the song structures, by the song writing, the arrangement, we‘re already good to go. We record all the solos live, so Kelsey with his trombone, Dave with his trumpet, even Mingo with his timbales, everybody is there live in the studio. It‘s democratic up to a certain point. And then once your part is recorded, you know how the puzzle‘s gonna look, you know what I‘m saying? So Mingo or Chachare, by the time the songs are done and they got their solos on there, they know that the final result is good. And

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Marcus and I are the ones who are the captains of the ship to carry it to the end. ‚Cause you need that, you don‘t want everybody to be there all the time, you don‘t want to have nine people in the mixing room saying „hey, turn my instrument up!“ (laughing) You wanna have somebody leading it.

Are we gonna see future solo projects of Professor?

I don‘t know man, that‘s a good question. If something was to come that was natural and made sense, then I would say yeah, because it was great fun and a great opportunity to try something different than the Groundation work.

But unless it has a clear point and a clear reason why I‘m doing it, then no. Just like this Professor project. It had no real purpose being a Groundation project. Because we‘d made the arrangements bigger, put solos in, all of a sudden there‘s gonna be a Groundation album that‘s about Israeli and Palestinian... No, because the Groundation idea is a one world idea. It‘s not meant to be a... Just as the music it‘s not simplified and is not brought to you in a very black and white manner. The lyrics also, they cannot be. The lyric is about a more universal idea. So the Professor‘s stuff is just that - professing, talking about something, witnessing something and professing what you see. So if that happens again, when that happens again, then there‘ll be another project.

What were the reactions of the rest of Groundation to your Madness?

I like how you phrase that, to your Madness.

They love it. They love the album, they think it‘s great. Some think it might have even better impact than the Groundation, just because of it‘s simplified, more direct, more palatable, more easy to taste than make this some kind of wild and crazy Groundation thing. But they also realize they have strength and security to know that the Groundation thing is what I‘m all about.

I‘m all about trying to be a part of something. I never wanted to be my thing. I always wanted to be involved in something. So everybody has confidence that I‘m not gonna be running away doing some solo career. Everyone‘s able to hear the music of Professor and enjoy it as just a mo-

ment of time. Which is good, because you can see that people could get worried and „ah, is he gonna leave“, you know. That‘s not what you want. I have to tell them that hey, Groundation is where it‘s at. I wanna be a part of something different, something new, something that‘s gonna strike people as...

You know, which is what we do! We travel around this world enough. I just got back two days ago from South America. We see all the bands that are touring, we see lots of groups. Groups from all over the world. And we know, not for better or for worse, we know that Groundation does something different. No one plays like we play. Whether it‘s good or bad, no one does that. Everybody does the same show. Everybody comes out „put your hands in the air!“ The same shows. Shows that are strong, but shows that are the same every night. We don‘t do that. If anything else, we try to do something crazy, we try to do something unique and special for that one night. Because that‘s it! It‘s very important to be live and to be real for us. And it seems like most bands don‘t do that, because if you‘re a singer, and you improvise as much as I improvise, you‘re gonna make mistakes. And singers, they don‘t want to make mistakes in front of 5,000 people. So they end up doing the same thing. They do the same thing every night. And when you see

them once, you see them twice, you say oh, they‘re really great. But then you see them three, four, five times and you go OK, that‘s just their thing. They do that every night. Whenever that song comes, he says that thing every time like that. In between these two songs, he says the same thing every night. It has no realness, it has no connection with the people who are there, the moment, the live moment. And it seems like we‘re one of the only bands that really steps out on that stage with bass solos and long horn solos and Marcus going crazy.

No bands do that. So that‘s what I want to be a part of. I‘m very happy and I‘m very honored to have the Groundation work there, man.

That‘s where you feel Groundation‘s jazz enculturation.

Yeah. You have to practice your instrument. You have to have a foundation of music, so that you have a strong backbone. You don‘t wanna be improvising and find yourself lost, and find yourself confused in the music. So you have to have a certain amount of confidence to be able to do that. And from all the nine people on stage for Groundation, all nine of us individually have confidence in what we do. We‘ve practiced our instruments, shedding the scales and all of the riddims and really working

Interview Harrison Stafford

hard. So that yeah, we can step out on that tight rope and have the confidence that we‘re gonna make it to the other side. Sometimes, the sound is like this. But because we‘re trying new things, and because we‘re attempting to be real and to have a moment, I don‘t think most bands can reach the heights that we reach live.

When we reach those heights live, it‘s happening. It‘s that moment. And that moment will never exist again, as opposed to the bands that play the same performance every night. They have the two or three big times and the crowd‘s all jumping and the band‘s jumping together and they‘re saying „jump, jump!“ They do this thing. It‘s gonna be that same moment the next night! That same thing‘s gonna exist that same way the next night. Something is very clean and powerful about that, but something is also synthetic about it. It‘s not so real-real. I like that edge. To us, that jazz mentality... Even when you see old Burning Spear live, that‘s improvisation!

That guy is getting into the spirit. And the band is with him, carrying it wherever it may go. It might be fifteen minutes, version of Jordan River or whatever it is. There‘s a different spark to that than what you see today. And we as Groundation, we‘re trying to hold on to that old spark, that old flash of real, true, live improvisation. And that‘s great.

With Groundation, you‘ve just finished recording a new album.

Yes, we did my friend! Yes, we did.

Would you introduce that project to us?

(Laughing) Can you say something about that?

Yeah man. We just finished recording. We actually played in South America one of the songs, Humility. We played it once or twice on the road there. Which was great, a great response.

And I didn‘t realize how difficult the song was to perform until we started performing it live.

Because in the studio, when you‘re singing, everything‘s nice. But then when you‘re out live playing it, you realize the difficulty in your breathing. Sometimes I write certain music, and I‘m writing in my house and we go in the studio and record it, but then when you play it live, you see that you really have to be conscious of where

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you take your breaths and how you take your breaths or else you won‘t be able to finish the long stands that you have or the big chorus. I realized that that song is pretty challenging to do.

The new album is called Building An Arc. It has references to Noah, Noah and the great flood and trying to save humanity by putting two by two and bringing male and female of all kinds into the arc. But we‘re not talking about a flood, not talking about building a boat. There‘s also talks about the Arc of the Covenant. It‘s where you want to bring things to keep them save and keep them holy. So for us, it‘s good people. The album really is about trying to rally all the good people of the world, and trying to get more good people.

Trying to get the people that are like ourselves you do good, you do good, and maybe you make some mistakes or you could always do better. It‘s trying to say ah, you know, I‘m not into the type of people. There‘s a song on the album called Merry Go Round. I‘m not into the type of people who are really good today and bad tomorrow and good today and bad tomorrow. I‘m into real positive people. It‘s like, you know, even listening to pop music today. Pop music today it reminds me of a merry go round, because somebody will have a song talking about real things, somebody will have a hit record, talking about respecting women or what not. But then the next single that comes out is talking about partying and how he‘s got all these cars and all this. I understand those people and the whole business behind it, you‘re trying to get a hit in this market, trying to get a hit in this market, trying to get a hit in this market. So I understand that you wanna hit with the party crowd, you wanna hit with the socially conscious crowd, you wanna hit with the hip hop crowd. But to me, you‘re just like a merry go round. If you really wanna live good, you have to live good! You can‘t just say hey, live good, and then the next song talk about... you know. A lot of this stuff is just societal stuff, a lot of what we see happening around us. All of the negative aspects of life is put there by human. All of the negative energy is put there by us. And the same thing with the positive energy, too. So this album Building An Arc is talking about positive people and how positive people exist in our society.

Whether you‘re in Germany, whether you‘re in

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California, there are good people and there are bad people, right? But we‘re trying to bring the good people together. And those who are on the edge, we‘re trying to bring them into the good side, to be with us. And that‘s how the album opens up. The album opens up with this real quiet kind of thing which is saying I don‘t wanna be alone, I don‘t wanna be alone out there. I wanna be surrounded by good people, friends and family and strangers alike. And good people are found in the Iran, as good people are found in Brazil, as good people are found in Israel, everywhere. So we wanna bring them together, because that‘s the only way we‘re gonna survive. By getting more positive energy for our planet and harboring good thoughts and good ideas from good people. That‘s what the album is about. That‘s why it‘s called Building An Arc. It‘s not an easy thing. It‘s our best album! I have confidence in saying that Building An Arc, this album coming, is our best work. And I think it‘s gonna shock some people, with the guest artists and all these things, it‘s gonna be surprising.

Expect something unexpected, expect outside the box! It might not be Bernard Collins or U-Roy or Ijahman as guest artists, it might be somebody you wouldn‘t expect! We‘re still mixing, we‘re gonna be mixing until after this next European tour that we‘re going on and the Bob Marley tribute tour that we‘re doing. We‘re excited. It feels really good.

Honestly, it feels really great. The last tour we just did, the tour in South America we just came back on, man it was the best tour in years. Honestly.

Just the energy of the band, the vibration... Ryan Newman on bass - the man stopped smoking cigarettes. Fantastic. He‘s a genius. Ryan Newman is a genius. Whatever he gets fixated on, he masters.

Whether it be - you know, he mastered poker, he‘s obviously mastered music, bass playing and all that. His musicianship is crazy. But recently, he‘s been tripping on health food and exercise. It‘s awesome, man! Honestly, Ryan was having challenges touring. ‚Cause touring is not easy, man.

Touring is no joke. It‘ll put stress on your family and your friends, it‘ll put stress on all your loved ones, it‘ll put stress on you. A lot of times, you‘re not eating very well, you‘re not resting very well.

You‘re traveling all over the place. You‘re spending lots of energy. For me, I get skinny, skinny, skinny, because I don‘t eat meat and all these things. So

Interview Harrison Stafford

when you travel to South America or when you travel to Europe, a lot of the places have meat, I have to kinda look and see. Maybe I only get one meal that whole day. And I play the show with this lights, I sweat... In Brazil, I sweat all my shirt until my pants. My pants are drenched in sweat. Every night. So how much weight do I lose. Touring is not easy. And the fact that Ryan has changed his whole mentality, he‘s gone from barely surviving the tours to loving it and being happy. And that‘s the key to all energy flow. If you‘re not happy in life, no good energy can enter you. So the tour was awesome. And because of that, we performed better than we‘ve ever performed. It was sweet. A great tour.

So we can really expect a lot from your upcoming European tour. Yeah!

We‘re riding on a nice high, man. We‘re riding on a very good wind. We‘re coming to you.

Talking about Holding On To Jah - you started to work on this documentary about the roots of Rastafari and reggae about a decade ago. Can you still retell how the idea was born?

Sure. It kinda came hand in hand with the university course that I was teaching, called the History Of Reggae Music at Sonoma State University.

Every now and again, when the artists would be touring in the area, whether it would be Israel Vibration, whether it would be Culture, whoever it was, I would try and have them come by the class. To be able to have a day where the artist is there discussing how they grew up and did it.

And I would call up my friend Roger Hall, who was at the time at the San Francisco Academy of Arts, and I said Roger, can you come out here, I got Joseph Hill from Culture coming - all blessings to Joseph who is no longer with us anymore. And Roger would come down and set up his camera, just record what they were talking about. We got Abba Melchizedek come through, who was Selassie‘s private secretary and personal advisor for Selassie‘s last twenty years of his time on the planet, or however you wanna describe it... That‘s really where it began. From there, I took Roger to Jamaica in 1999. We really did not have any actual idea what the project was gonna be. It was basically we‘re gonna go around to as many of

Interview Harrison Stafford

the Rasta elders as we can on the island and see them talk about their history and talk about life.

We had I don‘t know how many hundred hours, and then when Joseph Hill passed away in 2006, I called up Roger and say - because we had sat with him in Jamaica several times, the relationship had progressed into a very close thing with Joseph - and I said Roger, we gotta do something, we can‘t just let this person pass away and not finish this project. So from then, we got together and this is when we actually put together Holding On To Jah, the storyline. How are we gonna tell the story? Breaking it up into the sections of the island and the prophet Marcus Garvey and the King Haile Selassie, the revolution of the Rasta movement and the music. Really separating these five categories and telling the story.

And then once we had that outline, I basically put together a list of questions that we needed those answers for. I took a crew of people back to Jamaica, and for two weeks, pretty much all over the island, interviews and footage all over the island, just specifically on these ideas. So once we finished this, we had everything we needed to tell the story. It‘s really a great film that I‘m extremely proud of. We‘re still battling to get it released, because it‘s held back by licensing. It‘s the story of Jamaica and the Rasta movement

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as told by those who lived it. It centers around Haile Selassie, Groundation Day, when Selassie, April 21st, comes to Jamaica, 1966. And for a lot of these elder Rasta, they saw Selassie that day and they began to grow their locks and become Rasta. Lots of those people, Congos, Ashanti Roy, all these people. When that day took place, that‘s when it all clicked and they really became Rasta. So it centers around them, telling the story of the King coming to the island. We need to raise quite a bit of money to get the licensing complete, probably a 100,000 USD. Because there are 35 songs used in the film. And you know, it‘s telling the history of the Rasta movement in Jamaica! So you have songs like Satta Massagana, Equal Rights by Peter Tosh, Marcus Garvey. Pretty much all of the music in the film, the musicians and singers who wrote the songs, are in the film. They are all ready and willing to work with the film. It‘s just the publishers.

Getting the publishing, licensing rights to use that music. Even though the singer who wrote the song said yeah, use it! We even have letters from all the song writers saying that they‘re friends of ours and that we go back years and years and that this is a labor of love... It‘s a letter to their publisher and it‘s them saying „Please try and make it work! Don‘t be holding back and trying to get big money from these guys!“ ‚Cause we don‘t have money. These are letters from Bernard Collins saying hey, I wrote Satta Massagana, and I‘m telling you do what you can to give the licensing to these people! So we have all the tools and the keys that we need, we just got to raise a bunch of money! But it‘s being shown in film festivals right now. It‘s being shown in Hawaii in two weeks, I think it‘s gonna be shown in Portugal in a couple of weeks.

Where else is Roger going... There‘s a few more shows coming up. But it‘s been everywhere. It‘s been everywhere from Turkey, in Istanbul, it‘s been in DocAviv in Israel, it‘s been in Amsterdam, it was in Australia, Finland, Washington D.C., it‘s getting out there. We‘re just trying to raise that money. We need to get it. As you and I sit here and talk about it, I have been thinking in recent days about trying to have somebody or hire somebody who can just dedicate themselve full time into raising this money and trying to

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get some support. There‘s lots of people in Jamaica, whether it would be Red Stripe beer, whether it would be Digicel, Lime, all of these businesses in Jamaica have money, might wanna be a part of sponsoring something like this and it‘s a way to kind of spread the news about Jamaica, bringing awareness to the Jamaican culture and the people. I‘m really proud of it because it‘s the Rasta movement in their own words. I didn‘t go there and say hey, this is the script, say this. It‘s just me saying hey, what was it like for you when you heard people beginning to talk about Marcus Garvey. ‚Cause some of the people from Count Ossie‘s group go from way back, from the time that Back-o-Wire used to walk around Kingston.

Back-o-Wire was Marcus Garvey‘s driver and good friend, who later supposedly betrayed Marcus Garvey. People who where there, people who saw it. That‘s kind of what it‘s all about. It‘s not about Bob Marley. Bob Marley is mentioned in the ethereal background. Everyone knows something to say like „hey, when I was down there I‘d been walking down Trenchtown just to check Bob“ and what not, almost like the person seeing the film already knows Bob Marley. So when people just mention Bob or this and that, people know what it is. It deals nothing with Bob Marley and Joseph, very little about ganja and all that business. It‘s more talking about realities of what it is. And the reality of Rasta movement, it really coincides with what‘s happening today. With the clashes of religions, with the instability of the earth and the environment. It‘s really about that.

It‘s about equal rights and justice for all people, or else fire and brimstone. We‘re gonna see if fire and brimstone is gonna come, or if we‘re gonna be able to put the planet back in balance. It‘s very Rasta, because Rasta is about the planet, Rasta is about life. Which is great, because lots of religion talks about life after death. Rasta doesn‘t mention a word of death, because we‘re alive right now. Rasta is about life. That‘s really a great thing about the film. It really feels alive.

When I watched the movie for the first time about a year ago, I was amazed by the level of reflection shown by some of the artists interviewed like Pablo Moses.

Interview Harrison Stafford

Yeah man. Honestly, I don‘t wanna get into who is who and what‘s not. But some of the people are illiterate! Some of the people who are there, they know how to sign contracts, because they recognize their name. Some of the people who are involved in the film, they can‘t read or write.

That‘s crazy. But because of the music, they‘re really not Jamaican. Because people who are illiterate and never left Jamaica, they have a certain outlook on life. A very closed outlook, and they don‘t understand things. But because of the music, they‘ve been able to tour all throughout Europe and Africa, South America and America and they‘ve really learned a lot. They might not be able to read still, but they really learned a lot about life and society. And a Jamaican musician, Rasta, is really not Jamaican. Just as Joseph Hill would say. Somebody would say „ah, you‘re Jamaican!“ Joseph would look at them and be like „I‘m a worldlian“. He belonged to the world.

And it‘s true. And even with Joseph, I would talk to Joseph and say „Joseph, you know, Twelve Tribes, Bobo, Nyahbingi“ and Joseph would say „I‘m a musician. I‘m a musician. Musicians don‘t separate anybody. I don‘t belong to any of those things.“ He was not saying that he was above those things, but there‘s no reason to separate people. If you‘re a Rasta, then you‘re Rasta and live. That‘s it. It‘s great to really understand those things. And like you said, to be able to see these great elders who have witnessed so much, they‘re stars man! They‘re stars. Everyone of them is stars. When you go and see Prince Alla, when you go and see Ras Michael, when you go and see Horsemouth or anybody and they come on that screen and you see them - man, they‘re superstars! The way they hold themselves and talk... Each one of them shines. Something special. And I‘m happy because honestly, twenty years from now, people like yourself and kids are gonna be able to see Holding On To Jah. And there‘ll be very few of them who are still alive.

But they‘re gonna be there! They‘ll be there on that film for people to learn and listen and understand something bigger about life from it. That‘s great! To be a part of that - I‘m happy.

Talking about the Bob Marley tribute stuff that

Interview Harrison Stafford

Groundation does - virtually every reggae artist does Bob Marley tributes, but Groundation has done much, much more than that, recording live albums with the works of Bob and playing tribute shows and stuff. Why is that so important for you?

I think there‘s two sides to the Bob Marley thing.

One thing that we really feel is that he was - he wasn‘t the forerunner of reggae, but he was definitely the spearhead of the worldwide Rasta movement. The reason why we give so much credit to him is because he did things that a lot of Jamaicans at that time were not doing. Bob Marley took this music throughout the world when all of his friends in Jamaica, Horsemouth, anyone of those guys would tell you the same thing, they used to cuss Bob Marley. Rasta used to cuss Bob Marley in Jamaica because they thought he was doing the wrong thing. They thought Rasta, reggae music should never leave Jamaica. When Bob Marley started touring all over the place, they would say „ey, what are you doing Bob?“ Honestly, some of the musicians in Jamaica, they thought that the idea was if you wanted to hear reggae music, you‘d have to come to Jamaica. Because reggae music would not leave Jamaica. But then all of a sudden Bob Marley started leaving Jamaica and performing all over the place. And they would cuss him, „what are you doing?“ And Horsemouth even tells me to this day that he was saying - and it‘s great to see people live and learn, even when they‘re old people, it‘s fantastic to see - and Horsemouth turned to me one time and he said „Honestly, I feel bad. Because I didn‘t see what Bob Marley was doing. If Bob Marley was still alive today I would turn to my friend right now and I would tell him that I‘m sorry and I was wrong.“ Because Horsemouth used to cuss him. Saying that he wasn‘t doing good things and reggae music shouldn‘t be exported like that. But he says that he feels bad today, because Bob was right. I think Bob was right of many things, I think Bob saw and had vision that was way beyond him. When we go and perform Bob Marley‘s work, we‘re not just celebrating Bob Marley, but we‘re celebrating the Wailers also. For us as Groundation that means everything. Because above everything else, we‘re all musicians. And we all love music. I think everybody who knows music can say that it wasn‘t Bob Marley alone that made Bob Marley‘s music

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so great. You could say the greatest drummer of all time, Carlton Barrett, and the greatest bass player of all time, Family Man Barrett, happened to be Bob Marley‘s drums and bass.

And you gotta give thanks for Chris Blackwell and Island Records, because without those promotions and without that big, huge explosion, it would have gone nowhere. It wasn‘t Bob Marley alone. And honestly, if it wasn‘t for Selassie, if it wasn‘t for Marcus Garvey, if wasn‘t for Leonard Howell and the beginning of the Rasta movement, then Bob Marley would have nothing to say. Bob Marley would have had no image to go around. But you can imagine that for most people on the planet, here you have Bob Marley, who was half-white, half-Black, dreadlocked - probably the first time they ever saw a dreadlocked person, reggae music - probably the first time they ever danced to reggae music... Can you imagine the first time you ever hear reggae music is Bob Marley? And you go into a theater and Carlton, Family Man are playing drums and bass and the whole theater is rumbling Bob Marley reggae music?

Today we can‘t fathom that, ‚cause you walk

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into a Groundation show and you‘ve seen hundreds of other reggae concerts. But you can imagine for people in London, people in wherever, Italy or Germany, going to see reggae music and here you are, seeing the greatest example of that. And he was carrying the weight of Rasta, he was carrying the weight of reggae, and because of Chris Blackwell he got out to the people - I mean there were so many special things that happened to coincide with the life of Bob Marley to make it so great. We play the music to honor those musicians also. Because they did a great thing. That original spirit of the music seems lost almost. It seems almost locked away. Like reggae music can‘t be touched again. When you go to Jamaica and you put on their popular local TV of the music that‘s happening, you‘re gonna hear not so much reggae! When I say reggae, I mean like one drop, skank music, not so much pop music. But today, if you were to take Sizzla or Capleton or Vybz Kartel, if you were to take their vocals of the track, the music is quite soft and not so reggae. It could be seen as pop music, with just Patois over the top of it. Bob Marley‘s music is pure reggae. For us, we spend so much time on that music because it‘s like a well spring. You always learn something from it. If you‘re gonna study something, you should study the best. So to take your time, studying the Wailers, you know, for everybody... For Marcus - when Marcus goes and studies Wire Lindo and Tyrone Downie and what they were doing, when Ryan goes to play Family Man Barrett and all these things, I mean you‘re learning. You‘re studying with the masters of the music, who created a sound and identity that no one can touch! The more time you spend on it, the more rewarding it‘ll be. We used to in the States, every february on Bob‘s birthday, come together and do a whole month of touring on the West Coast of the US. That‘s been going on for the last ten, eleven years. Like you said, we do spend lots of time on the music. I was saying that there‘s two sides, it‘s twofold. One, it needs that respect. At the same time I do have to say that reggae has had an unfortunate thing. And it‘s by no fault of Bob Marley, because Bob Marley‘s not here right now. I have never heard of a genre of music that really gets defined by one person.

We are here to celebrate this one person, because they gave their life to this music and this movement, and we have to honor that person. At the same time, society, the music industry, for whatever reasons - I have my own hypothesis as to why they try and keep

Interview Harrison Stafford

reggae music down, I‘m sure you have your own - they‘ve done a good job... I‘m not sure what the whole purpose is, but in America, if you go to a music store, one you‘ll be lucky to get a reggae section. But if you do get a reggae section, it‘ll be 90% Bob Marley. You go to a Best Buy and these places, that are kind of the only places that sell CDs now, because Warehouse Records, they‘re all closed, because no more record business... Reggae music is not just Bob Marley, just the same way that jazz music is not Miles Davis, the same way that rock and roll music is not Led Zeppelin... It‘s a lot of different people who have it. It‘s funny in reggae that you have one person selling millions and millions, and the rest of them selling one thousand, two thousands. It‘s unfortunate. Our agent in Brazil talks about that a lot. His English pretty good, and he‘ll still talk occasionally and be like „you know I love Bob Marley, but I think that the business did a bad thing by portraying reggae music as Bob Marley.“ And maybe you‘ll get Peter Tosh in there, but that‘s pretty much it.

That makes it difficult for any type of reggae musicians who wanna come up. But you really have to honor Bob, because the more you celebrate somebody, the more they‘re with you.

The more you play Bob Marley‘s music is the more you call his name. The more Bob Marley‘s

Interview Harrison Stafford

spirit is in the air, the better. Really. Because you can say what you want about his personal life and people can talk whatever they wanna talk - and it‘s easy to talk, because the man‘s not here. But in the end of the day Bob Marley‘s role in life was to spread positiveness and to be a part of that is great. And to continue it, it‘s great.

Could you outline the different approaches to songwriting of you and Bob Marley?

I could imagine that Bob Marley would be writing his songs and showing the band his songs. I think you can tell just by listening that Bob Marley wrote music and the Wailers made it an arrangement, made it the song. But I think in Groundation you could feel that all the musicians write the music.

Once all the musicians write the music, the arrangement‘s already done. Ours, I believe, ours is a much bigger contribution by all parties. And it‘s different. We‘re not trying to write the best song or the most catchy song - in fact if I write a catchy song I usually won‘t record it. In fact the most catchy songs are probably on the Madness album. They were just written as song ideas, sung into the phone. They were not meant to be anything more. But in Groundation, we‘re really trying to find a song, find a musical sound that‘s gonna make Marcus shine, that‘s gonna make Ryan shine. What‘s Ruffus gonna sound the best playing drums on? How is Kelsey gonna sound the greatest? What am I gonna do that‘s gonna do that‘s gonna make it be the greatest thing I‘ve ever done? It‘s much more writing for who we are, than just writing a catchy song and try to make it a hit for the market. That‘s how you get that music that we have! No band is gonna have a song like Music Is The Most High, with three different sections, all different tempos, with drum solos and trombone solos and interweaving of organs and vocals. It only happens because we play together and improvise together and record all the stuff.

And then we go back and transcribe what we did and we can recreate it. We can listen to our improvisation and make it into a song. As opposed to a band that plays a bunch of stuff, „well that was great. Oh crap, what are we do“, you know. Or even a band that does all this great stuff, records it all, but has no ability to notate. Then they‘re left saying, „OK, remember, I‘m gonna play this

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thing, and then you do a big fill, and then I‘ll come and...“ It‘s not such a vague language. Our language is very direct. „I‘m gonna be playing this“, and it‘s gonna be a music sheet of paper that has all the notes that I‘m doing. We‘re really trying to find a sound. The best sound for Groundation is when everybody is shining. You‘re not gonna get a Groundation album and you get a three minute little single long song and „oh that‘s a great song.“ No. The best Groundation thing you‘re really gonna hear, you‘ll be like „I can‘t believe what that drummer is doing. And look at the bass player is playing that bass slide over there that‘s crossing here and the organ player is soloing on top of that and there‘s this horn line in the background...“ Just a very unique thing that could only be defined by the musicians who are playing it.

That‘s what Groundation is. It‘s very different. Just like in the Madness record, if you didn‘t have Horsemouth playing, and maybe you had Style Scott playing the drums, or maybe you had Sly playing the drums... Or instead of Flabba, maybe you had Stone play the bass or Family Man play the bass... But in a Groundation album you can‘t really substitute any of the musicians. This is meant for these people. That‘s what‘s very rare. Because most bands, the songs they have, you can‘t define the musicians so much. Yes, it‘s a good drummer or a good bass player, but I‘m not really focussing on the bass player. It‘s just kind of a nice song.

Ours is a demanding sound, man. And the more you look into the Groundation sound, the more rewarding it will be. As opposed to the more you look into the pop sound, the less rewarding it is.

In South America and in Europe recently I heard that a lot of people didn‘t get Here I Am. In fact, a lot of folks we talked with, whether with people who reviewed the album or people who didn‘t said „You know, honestly, Here I Am, when it came out, I didn‘t like it.“ I was like, what is this? „And then the more I listened to it, I realized it‘s the greatest Groundation album.“ That‘s what the people have always said. But if you don‘t give it the opportunity, you won‘t understand that stuff. And if you put Here I Am or any Groundation album in, thinking it‘s gonna sound like the previous album, you‘re not going about it the right way! If you buy a Groundation album thinking it‘s supposed to sound like a reggae album like „I bought Burning

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Spear‘s album, I bought Steel Pulse‘s album, and I bought Groundation‘s album“ - you know, one of them is gonna be very different. It‘s gonna be the Groundation. You might be disappointed. But the more you dive into it, I think you‘ll get what we‘re trying to do. You‘ll understand that it‘s getting more focused. And it‘s getting better, the music of Groundation. Like those things of really trying to define musicians, trying to write the song that best showcases their talents, as opposed to telling them what to play. I think we‘re getting better at that. I think our group identity and our unified Groundation sound is evolving to a different, a more special and a more unique place.

I‘m sure you can tell us a fascinating anecdote of Bob Marley from musicians who worked with him.

There‘s always fascinating anecdotes of Bob Marley. Well, one thing I can say - on the track Work on the album Uprising, Bob Marley‘s last album, Horsemouth was at Tuff Gong Studio, and Horsemouth didn‘t have enough money. You know, he had that motor scooter from Rockers, and he didn‘t have enough money to put gas in his scooter there. So he was with Bob the whole day, and they recorded the song. He‘s begin‘ money from Bob. „Yo Bob, give me some money for gas, money for gas!“ Finally Bob turns to Horsemouth and says, „Horse, you go in here on this song and play kick drum, and I‘ll give you money for gas.“ So for that song Work, it‘s Horsemouth right foot playing the kick drum, and Carlton playing the drum still, same way. That‘s how he earned his gas money!

Bob is great, man. You always hear great things about Bob Marley. What can you say, the man had 36 years and he did a great deal of work in those 36. That‘s sweet. I wish he had longer and I‘m sure he did as well, but if you only get 36 years, may your name be remembered like Bob Marley‘s!

As Harrison Stafford personally, are there favorite reggae festivals of yours?

Hm. That‘s difficult. Honestly, you guys in Europe have the lion share of the good festivals. I know that the Mount Fiji Festival in Japan is a big festival there. I don‘t know what‘s going on this year with all the craziness of the earthquake and tsunami aftermath... But that goes on in December usually. Brazil has tons of festivals, but Brazil is

Interview Harrison Stafford

just craziness. Tens of thousands of people, they all don‘t speak very much English at all. They don‘t understand, like right after you performed, that you want ten or fifteen minutes to just cool down and have some water and what not. They won‘t accept it. „Photo, photo, photo!“ Almost like you have to be rude, you know what I mean? You don‘t want to be rude, but you almost have to be just to get your ten minutes so you don‘t pass out!

Because when you‘ve just performed, for me, you gave a lot of energy. You gotta put some fluids in.

The Brazilians are wild, they‘re very hands-on people. And because of that, their festivals are usually very chaotic. I like the European festivals, because it‘s disciplined and it‘s run very well.

Everybody knows what time they‘re playing.

Brazil, they‘ll be like „you guys are going at one o‘clock, one a.m.“ OK, one a.m. And one a.m. in Brazil means you‘re not gonna go on until 2:33 a.m. ‚cause they‘re always so late, late, late. One show we played last week, our set time to start was 4:30 in the morning! The beginning of our show! It was great, the people were great. But the bottom line, it‘s 5:30 in the morning and you‘re playing music! I mean, people are tired... So when we play Summerjam, when we play Reggae Sun Ska - I don‘t know what‘s happening with the Rototom?

They moved to Spain now. Right, it‘s in Spain.

Is it still thriving?

From what I heard, yes. Eight days instead of ten now (In 2011, ten days again), but all my friends who were there last year were absolutely amazed.

They said it was awesome? That‘s great. I was kinda worried, because that was really the festival. Whenever we were traveling around, it was always like... yeah... You think three day reggae music festivals are the big deal? At that time, it was in Osoppo in Italy. We played there four or five times. It was always a great time. When you can go to a festival and be there for nine, ten days and see all these different bands and all that, it‘s almost like you‘re seeing three or four festivals in one. That‘s sweet. There really isn‘t so so many.

And the reggae festivals in the States - reggae is not so good in the States. Reggae gets the fight.

I shouldn‘t say that unless you play a different

Interview Harrison Stafford

type of reggae, like a pop reggae. We have not had the same... For instance, there‘s Benz here in the States who has had more success than we have. In more recent times, too. But the music is very different. I say these things, too, just because I‘m a musician and I love music. But to the average person, maybe it sounds the same to them. I have no idea. We‘re always at a constant kind of bafflement as to why we are successful or why we are seen as this band when it seems like most other bands that are popular, they don‘t really do what we do. The average person - maybe they think that we do sound like them.

Maybe the average person doesn‘t quite get what we do as being different than, let‘s say, what Gentleman does. Like somebody would come up and say „you guys are great, you and SOJA“ or something like that. And you‘re like wow! For me those musics are very different. Not that one‘s better or worse. Really? We sound...? „Matisyahu has kind of the same sound.“ What? Matis the same sound as Groundation? Maybe I‘m in a different world or something, but I have never heard them do what we do. And we certainly don‘t do what they do. You might think I‘m talking bad about pop music...

Not at all. ... but it has nothing to say. I mean this person Matisyahu has sold many more albums than we have. And it means a lot to those people!

That album meant a great deal to those 500,000 people or a million people. So you can‘t discredit that! I can‘t say that his music is not good. It‘s great! It means a lot. It‘s not at all what we do, and we‘re never going to do that. There comes a strong line between doing music that you really love and feel strongly about and doing music that is commercially successful and that people really love. I think one of our biggest pluses is that we play a music that very few do. Because we‘re so different, we have a really nice fan base around the world who really loves what we do and is curious and is excited for what we‘re gonna do in the future. And I think because we‘re so different, we are also not as popular as we could be.

It‘s like a double-edged sword. But to me, if I was to list a bunch of popular modern reggae bands, they all have a sound to them. But our sound is

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not that. Our sound exists in a different space.

Our sound is much more musical, for musicians to really check out and see. It‘s got a density to it that requires thought and focus. The more modern generation doesn‘t have so much focus (laughing). With all this onslaught of information and things... Everybody wants something quick and their attention span is leaving. It‘s a challenge for them to really get on board with our music. And speaking of reggae music in general, it has gotten a fight. Whether it‘s because it comes from poor people, or whether it‘s talking about equal rights and justice for poor people, or whether it‘s just dreadlock, Rastaman they don‘t wanna see doing whatever it is... Whatever the reason, it certainly does not get promoted like it should. In America, for instance, if somebody gave me 50,000 dollars and said „hey, promote Groundation in America“, there are no reggae radio stations, there are no reggae newspapers or magazines, there are no reggae television shows... Where would I promote it? It leads you to believe that it‘s about the system, it‘s about what‘s going on there. Like in America, you have the Grammy awards. The greatest music award to be given. It‘s given by members of the academies of arts. Bob Marley was touring the world, selling millions of albums, and there was never a reggae grammy until years after he died! It seems to me like it‘s purposeful.