Daniel T. Neely | …rinne sé trup tabaisteach
Hey, I got Interviewed!
Steve Shafer, proprietor of the excellent Duff Guide to Ska blog, has posted an interview he did with me about my research on mento and work with the Jolly Boys! Click here to ch-ch-check it out!
Jolly Boys Press!
As I write the Jolly Boys are out on tour, getting their feet wet in Europe. Although I wish I could be there with them to see how their stage show is developing, I am living vicariously through the press coverage. I would imagine there’s still much more to come, but the stuff I’ve seen [...]
Jolly Boys Video & Website
If you’ve come to the site before, you might remember that last November I became involved in a recording project with the Jolly Boys, an important mento group from Port Antonio, Jamaica. (BTW, I came into the project on Herbie Miller’s recommendation; Herbie’s a good friend and is doing important work as the director of [...]
Hedley Jones and his Automatic Guitar
This video was embedded using the YouTuber plugin by Roy Tanck. Adobe Flash Player is required to view the video. Last week I was in Jamaica on a very successful instrument buying trip for the Musical Instrument Museum. After I’d finished the Montego Bay-based leg of my work, I took an hour the evening before [...]
The Jolly Boys
Between November 3rd and 12, I was in Jamaica at GeeJam Studios to work on Jon Baker’s Jolly Boys recording project. Months ago, Jon came up with an idea to invite the Jolly Boys (featuring Albert Minott, a Jolly Boy from the early 1960s who took a long hiatus to perform in north coast floor [...]
The Harder They Come
On October 9, 1948, Jamaica police shot and killed Ivanhoe Martin on Lime Cay in Jamaica. “Rhygin,” as he was more popularly known, was a gangster and a folk hero and, as many know, the inspiration for Perry Henzell’s The Harder They Come, a Jamaican film starring Jimmy Cliff as Ivan Martin. Although he was [...]
Back from Chicago
I spent the last week at the Center for Black Music Research at Columbia College in Chicago on a little travel grant to track the Sankey repertory in Jamaica (and to a [much] lesser extent, other Caribbean islands) through field recordings. I found SO much great stuff, so I got some great material to think [...]
T. Miller, An Important Mento Musician, Passes
Today’s issue of the Jamaica Gleaner reported that Theodore Miller, fiddle player, leader of the Lititz Mento Band, and mento music legend, passed away on June 10. Miller was born on August 1, 1922 in the Watson’s Hill area of Manchester, a rural district very close to the St. Elizabeth border. The area he grew [...]
Blue Glaze Mento Band
Since I’ve got this site up and running, I figure I should make with some content already! It’s not like I’ve taken too many photos here in Ireland yet! But I do have a video that I took while I was in Jamaica recently. On Saturday, June 6th, I drove Florabelle Spielmann from the Maison [...]