Doors at 9:00 pm; Performance at 9:30 pm
Tickets are $30 Pre-Sale / $35 Day of Show
A founder of Jamaica’s first great female reggae trio, the I-Threes (who backed Bob Marley), as well as a singing star on her own, Marcia Griffiths joins reggae’s greatest rhythm section, Sly & Robbie and their band the Taxi Gang, in a night of classic and contemporary conscious reggae.
Drummer Sly Dunbar and electric bassist Robbie Shakespeare not only anchored the classic hits of Jamaican reggae in the 1970s and ‘80s, they also served as rhythm section for everyone from Grace Jones to Bob Dylan. Their deep groove innovations in the studio with traditional and electronic instruments earned them the moniker “The Riddim Twins.”
Sly and Robbie became the driving force behind the Channel One recording studio sound that dominated reggae in its early years, most prominently with Peter Tosh and Black Uhuru. They became not just musicians but arrangers and producers. Their teaming with fellow Jamaican Grace Jones in disco-rock dance music catapulted Jones to international fame. They also worked with a Who’s Who of reggae including Don Carlos, Michael Rose, Junior Reid, Shaggy, Cherine Anderson, Gregory Isaacs, Dennis Brown and Ini Kamoze.
By the 1980s Sly & Robbie were in demand by a wide range of global musicians, and have collaborated with, among others, Ben Harper, Bob Dylan, Herbie Hancock, Serge Ganisbourg, Mick Jagger, the Rolling Stones, Grace Jones, Paul McCartney, Carlos Santana, Sinéad O'Connor, Britney Spears, Alicia Keys, UB40's Ali Campbell, Joe Cocker, No Doubt, the Fugees and Michael Franti. To name just a few.
Kingston, Jamaica’s Marcia Griffiths started singing professionally in 1964 for ska (pre-reggae) group Byron Lee and the Dragonaires band and became a session singer at Coxsone Dodd’s Studio One where she had her own hits and duets with Bob Andy. In concert she invited Judy Mowatt and later Rita Marley to accompany her, and the I-Threes were born. When Peter Tosh and Bunny Wailer left the Wailers, Bob Marley added the I-Threes as his harmony singers and the women gained international acclaim. The group continued for some years after Marley’s 1981 death, and have reunited several times since. The women also developed solo careers, with Griffiths hailed as the “queen of reggae music.” She carries on not only the spirit and politics popularized by Bob Marley, but also a feminist stance in conscious lyrics. Her most recent recording, “Marcia and Friends,” features such old and recent guests as John Holt, Buju Banton, Beres Hammond and Gregory Isaacs.
