REVIEW |KING YELLOWMAN & THE SAGITTARIUS BAND LIVE AT THE JAZZ CAFE, LONDON

Pic­ture cred­it: Ins­tagram @Jay46son

I get in at 8pm sharp. The lights are low, and about 25 people in there, between the bar and the stage. And with warm up music on the play on the speak­ers it leaves space for strictly good vibes in the air. Walk­ing into the Jazz Café, Cam­den, there is a broth­er to the right of the doors with a table selling yel­low­man tshirts, some with Zung­gu-zung­gu-guzung-guz­eng and some just in a flash style font say­ing ‘King Yellowman!’

I get a bottle of water and find me a good spot. With a few more people com­ing in, it’s a big mixed crowd, a lot of young folks out on a Fri­day night and some older folks, who per­haps grew up on Dance­hall and Yellowman…the Jamaic­an dance hall massive!

830-some­thing and the jazz café is now get­ting full, its weed and warm up in the air when rising dance­hall artist Pep­pery starts the sup­port warm up. He gets the crowd in the mood! Pure Dance­hall with tracks of his like, Facts of life, Social Media and How di place a run. Clayton Brown, more pop­ularly known as Pep­pery, is argu­ably, cur­rently one of the most under­rated artists in the Reg­gae Dance­hall industry. Ori­gin­ally from Tre­lawny, Jamaica, he is now based in Manchester, UK.

9pm The Sagit­tari­us Band have come out and taken their seats behind their respect­ive instru­ments for the night. They con­tin­ue the vibes from where pep­pery left off with the rid­dim to Nobody Move, Nobody Get Hurt (Dis­eases rid­dim by Henry ‘Junjo’ Lawes), and every­one eagerly await­ing to see King Yellowman.

Alright! Verbally nimble with a loose, easy flow King Yel­low­man bounces out onto the stage with this daugh­ter, Kareema Foster” K’reema”. Bear­ing in mind dance­hall super star born Janu­ary 1956 stand­ing tall and sprightly at 63 years old, the exact same age as my fath­er, is jump­ing from one side of the stage to the oth­er shak­ing hands with a few crowd mem­bers and shar­ing his excite­ment and love for the people.

Pic­ture cred­it: Ins­tagram @pepperymusic

Win­ston Foster, Jamaica’s first dance­hall super­star, AKA Yel­low­man gained wide pop­ular­ity in the dance­hall reg­gae scene in the 1980s. And without wast­ing time, the bass gets deep­er and the fath­er daugh­ter duo are already singing line for line Nobody Move, Nobody Get Hurt, and the crowd is lov­ing it.

King Yel­low­man’s suc­cess­ful singles “I’m Get­ting Mar­ried in the Morn­ing,” “Nobody Move, Nobody Get Hurt” and “Zung­guzung­guguzung­guz­eng” which brought him world­wide acclaim were played one after the oth­er. Dem mad over me as well as tracks from the 1984 album titled King Yel­low­man, Jamaica Nice, Mi Believe, Wha Dat and Still Be A Lady took us past 10pm.

There was me stand­ing some­where at the back skank­ing and try­ing not to bump into oth­ers around me, listen­ing to one of my King Yel­low­man favor­ites, Lost Mi Love, and on the oth­er side of the spec­trum was Yel­low­man him­self, by far the fit­test man in the room, jump­ing, stretch­ing, doing push ups on stage, 63 or 33! Age is clearly just a number.

There was a con­tinu­al love and appre­ci­ation from Yel­low­man verbally said to the crowd every so often ” I love you, I love you!” That mixed in with a good crowd and the great live music made the even­ing a great one!

K’reema played a big part in the even­ing. She shined bright and when the audi­ence heard her voice over acous­tics and the rid­dims, it blew us all away. Turn­ing to music in 2013–14 with her first song, We Don’t Give a What, described as “roots-reg­gae, dance­hall and pop”. She has her fath­ers full sup­port and cer­tainly the tal­ent, boun­cing of Yel­low­man’s energy and him want­ing her to play a more act­ive part in the Lon­don nights performance.

Jazz café Cam­den was fully packed out, with people hav­ing a hard time squeez­ing through one anoth­er to get anoth­er drink or go out­side. The energy from the night’s music and Yel­low­man def­in­itely left every­one on a good vibe. The crowd were thrown-back to the 80s’s, with a sense of nos­tal­gia, it was a remark­able show from a Dance­hall legend, who proved that even after many years, des­pite the suf­fer­ing he has faced health wise he is still undeni­ably one of the best show­men in the scene.

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Jymit S Khondhu

Jymit, dur­ing the day a tech­ie in the soft­ware world, at night, a reg­gae and good vibes seeker. On the forever search for strictly roots and cul­ture in the form of music. Be it live jazz, reg­gae & Dub, around the world.

Latest posts by Jymit S Khondhu (see all)

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• REVIEW |KING YEL­LOW­MAN & THE SAGIT­TARI­US BAND LIVE AT THE JAZZ CAFE, LON­DON — Septem­ber 3, 2019