Repeating Islands

“Mento” is back with The Jolly Boys’ new album Great Expectation (2010). Mel Cooke (Jamaica Gleaner) explains that mento, was originally “country people music” with the banjo, maracas and rumba box needing no electronic amplification, but that “somewhere along the timeline of Jamaica’s popular musical development, though, it became relegated to ‘tourist music’, the floral-shirt-clad figures beaming under straw hats and warbling ‘Yellow Bird,’ a far cry from and sad caricature of irreverent, bawdy, witty and extemporaneous mento.”

With the help and enthusiasm of Jon Baker (Gee Street Records and Geejam Studios) The Jolly Boys—“consisting of three original members and a number of ‘new’ Jolly Boys”— have produced Great Expectation and are now going on a one-month tour of the United Kingdom. Before this tour, The Jolly Boys will be performing on July 3 at Red Bones in Kingston, Jamaica.

The album offers a mix of traditional and contemporary mento, featuring Albert Minott, “an incredibly charismatic vocalist,” in Baker’s words. Some of the tracks are “Perfect Day,” “Riders on the Storm,” “Golden Brown,” “I Fought the Law,” “Ring of Fire,” and “You Can’t Always Get What You Want.”

For full article, see http://jamaica-gleaner.com/gleaner/20100627/ent/ent1.html

For more information and video clips of The Jolly Boys, see http://jollyboysmusic.com/ and http://geejamstudios.com/blog/tag/albert-minott/