Reggae

On Thursday night, Matisyahu , born Matthew Miller , headlined the season's second WFNX Best Music Poll show, this one at the Bank of America Pavilion. The concert was a diverse bill of reggae, hip-hop, and rock, and in Matisyahu's hands, those ingredients often came together seamlessly in the same song. This musical anomaly, that is, a reggae- and rap-inspired Orthodox Jewish vocalist, comes across as resoundingly shtick-free and sincere. Backed by a guitar, bass, and drum trio, Matisyahu has an amiable reggae flow in songs "Youth" and "King Without a Crown.

Thirty years ago this month, Bob Marley died of cancer at 36. Yet he's very much alive globally — and here in Massachusetts. "Marley," Kevin MacDonald's documentary about the Jamaican reggae singer, is playing in Cambridge. Local writer Stephen Davis's 1983 biography "Bob Marley: Conquering Lion of Reggae" is still in print. A recent children's picture book called "One Love," after one of Marley's songs, is on sale in Boston stores. His continuing popularity underscores how a simple, uplifting message — especially one set to compelling music — can transcend the unruliness of our...

KINGSTON, Jamaica - Rap-reggae pioneer King Stitt has died in Jamaica at age 72. Jamaican musicologist Bunny Goodison said his close friend died Tuesday after being treated at a Kingston hospital for prostate cancer and diabetes. The entertainer known offstage as Winston Sparks started his career in the late 1950s on Kingston's sound system circuit. He is credited as being one of the earliest performers of "toasting," a form of Jamaican deejaying that inspired hip hop. He leaves a daughter.

Whenever an artist's family authorizes a documentary, there's a worry that it's going to be a rosy, public-relations piece. "Marley" is not that. It's an outstanding, warts-and-all look at reggae legend Bob Marley, who died young of cancer at age 36 in 1981 but not before becoming a Third World superstar. Marley overcame a ghetto upbringing in the Trench Town neighborhood of Kingston, Jamaica, to become a gifted writer of socially conscious, spiritually uplifting reggae anthems.

KINGSTON, Jamaica - Leonard Dillon, leader of the pioneering reggae group The Ethiopians, has died. He was 68. Patrice Dillon, his daughter, said her father died at her home Wednesday of lung and prostate cancer. She said Mr. Dillon had been diagnosed with cancer in June and underwent surgery to remove a brain tumor earlier this year. Leonard Dillon began his career using the stage name Jack Sparrow in the early 1960s. He recorded a series of ska songs, including "Bull Whip," which featured a young Bob Marley on backing vocals.

Sinead O'Connor doesn't give a damn. At 39 and officially retired from the pop life, the stellar Irish singer has found a spiritual home in Rastafari and a renewed musical purpose in interpreting hallowed roots-reggae classics. Whether this personal evolution makes any sense to you is not her problem. And, considering the depth and searing authenticity of her performance Monday at Avalon, more power to her. O'Connor hasn't done things halfway. She enlisted for her latest album, "Throw Down Your Arms," one of the world's greatest rhythm sections, drummer Sly Dunbar and bassist Robbie...

KINGSTON, Jamaica -- Songs by late reggae legends Bob Marley and Peter Tosh, both devout Rastafarians, will be included in a new collection of Anglican church hymnals in Jamaica. Marley's "One Love" and Tosh's "Psalm 27" will be the first reggae tunes to appear in songbooks alongside traditional worship music on the island that gave birth to reggae, said church leaders preparing a new collection of hymns. The Rev. Ernle Gordon, a church spokesman, said Friday that members of the Anglican Church of Jamaica were enthusiastic about including the reggae musicians' music in...

One of the founders of a leading Jamaican reggae and rocksteady trio from the 1960s has died. A bandmate says Barry Llewellyn of the Heptones died Wednesday at age 64. Lead singer Leroy Sibbles said Friday that Llewellyn died of unknown causes at Kingston Public Hospital. Llewellyn founded the Heptones with Earl Morgan in the late 1950s. The group was considered highly influential during the island's rocksteady era in the 1960s. The Heptones reunited in the 1990s after a nearly 20-year absence during a worldwide ska and rocksteady revival.

The leader of the pioneering reggae group The Ethiopians has died in Jamaica. Leonard Dillon was 68. Daughter Patrice Dillon says her father died Wednesday at her home of lung and prostate cancer. She says Dillon had been diagnosed with cancer in June and underwent surgery to remove a brain tumor earlier this year. Leonard Dillon began his career using the stage name Jack Sparrow in the early 1960s. He recorded a series of ska songs, including "Bull Whip," which featured a young Bob Marley on backing vocals.

KINGSTON, Jamaica - Winston Riley, an innovative reggae musician and producer, died Thursday of a gunshot wound to the head. He was 65. Mr. Riley died at University Hospital of the West Indies, where he had been a patient since November, when he was shot at his house in an upscale neighborhood in the capital of Kingston, his son Kurt said Friday. Mr. Riley also had been shot in August and was stabbed in September. His record store in Kingston's downtown business district was burned down several years ago. Police have said they know of no motives and have not arrested anyone.

In the 35 years since the first Jam record, Paul Weller has, as a bandleader or a solo artist, released 23 studio albums that have made him a megastar in the UK and remained largely invisible in the States outside of mod, punk, and Britpop cult fandom. His latest effort, "Sonik Kicks," won't change that. Continuing in the same vein as 2010's "Wake Up the Nation," the album finds Weller throwing sounds against the wall and seeing what sticks. Unfortunately, not much does. Opener "Green" is fitted out with a synthesized throb and heavy drumbeat pulse that offer the same spaceflight lift as the Secret Machines,...

The singer is usually not the guy grabbing much of the attention in Galactic, as the New Orleans funk ensemble uses a revolving cast of vocalists live and on record. And in the legendary reggae band Steel Pulse, singer David Hinds has long been the galvanizing focal point, with his ton of dreadlocks and fiery rhetoric. But Sunday at the House of Blues, convention was upended as Living Colour singer Corey Glover gave a charismatic performance sitting in for much of Galactic's set, and Hinds, who blew out his voice at the previous night's show, deferred to longtime Steel Pulse...

KINGSTON, Jamaica - Rap-reggae pioneer King Stitt has died in Jamaica at age 72. Jamaican musicologist Bunny Goodison said his close friend died Tuesday after being treated at a Kingston hospital for prostate cancer and diabetes. The entertainer known offstage as Winston Sparks started his career in the late 1950s on Kingston's sound system circuit. He is credited as being one of the earliest performers of "toasting," a form of Jamaican deejaying that inspired hip hop. He leaves a daughter.

KINGSTON, Jamaica - Winston Riley, an innovative reggae musician and producer, died Thursday of a gunshot wound to the head. He was 65. Mr. Riley died at University Hospital of the West Indies, where he had been a patient since November, when he was shot at his house in an upscale neighborhood in the capital of Kingston, his son Kurt said Friday. Mr. Riley also had been shot in August and was stabbed in September. His record store in Kingston's downtown business district was burned down several years ago. Police have said they know of no motives and have not arrested anyone.

Grammy-winning reggae star Buju Banton claims in an appeal of his federal drug conviction there was not enough evidence to prove he was involved in a cocaine conspiracy. The appeal filed Friday by attorney David O. Markus also says Banton was relentlessly pursued by a federal informant seeking a $50,000 government payday. Markus says that resulted in improper entrapment. Banton, whose real name is Mark Myrie, is serving a 10-year prison sentence following his February conviction on cocaine conspiracy and trafficking charges.

ENDANGERED SPEECHES With: Idle Worship (Talib Kweli & Res) At: Middle East Downstairs, Cambridge. Wednesday, 9 p.m. 18+. Tickets: $20 in advance, $23 door. 617-864-3278, www.mideastclub.com Mariletta Konstantara pops her head out of a graffiti-tagged door on Boylston Street around 10 a.m. on an overcast Monday morning in late November, her long dreadlocks falling near her waist. Musicians are not known for favoring mornings for interviews, but most of her 13-member hip-hop and reggae band, Endangered Speeches, are already downstairs waiting in the basement rehearsal space...

It might well have been 96 degrees in Jamaica this week, a point that the jovial MC at Gregory Isaacs's performance Wednesday at the Paradise took great pleasure in noting, with Boston stuck in a deep winter chill. Such trivial matters didn't bother reggae veteran Isaacs though. He soon turned up the heat in the sold-out club. Dressed in a white cotton suit more appropriate for his Jamaican home, the so-called "Cool Ruler" brought his smooth, romantic "lovers rock" to a thrilled audience.

KINGSTON, Jamaica - Cedella Booker, the mother of Jamaican music legend Bob Marley, died Tuesday in her sleep, a family spokesman said yesterday. She was 81. Ms. Booker, a native of Jamaica, was 18 when she married Norval Marley, a British man 32 years her senior. Their son brought Jamaican reggae music to international prominence, becoming its image. Bob Marley died of a brain tumor in 1981. "Mrs. Booker was the matriarch of a movement so powerful that the mystical qualities of the Marley musical legacy remain strong and potent," said Olivia...

One of the founders of a leading Jamaican reggae and rocksteady trio from the 1960s has died. A bandmate says Barry Llewellyn of the Heptones died Wednesday at age 64. Lead singer Leroy Sibbles said Friday that Llewellyn died of unknown causes at Kingston Public Hospital. Llewellyn founded the Heptones with Earl Morgan in the late 1950s. The group was considered highly influential during the island's rocksteady era in the 1960s. The Heptones reunited in the 1990s after a nearly 20-year absence during a worldwide ska and rocksteady revival.