Even if the sun doesn’t splash down Sunday on Banneker Field, the site of an all-day reggae festival, it’s likely to be a very bright day in the life of Carl Malcolm. Singer, recording artist, band leader, promoter and independent record producer, he sees the home-grown festival as yet another strong indication of how reggae has prospered in Washington.
“It was really a struggle to keep the music going,” says the 40-year-old Takoma Park resident of the days after he moved here from Jamaica in 1977. “But we’ve reached a point now where a lot more people are involved, in production work and in putting on shows. It’s getting better all the time.”
It would seem that Malcolm and his band, Positive Vibration, deserve at least some of the credit for that. Formed 5 1/2 years ago, the sextet has become one of Washington’s premiere reggae bands, equally versed in the sexy ballads that made Malcolm a star in Jamaica and later in England, insinuating dance tracks and the more topical tunes he has written recently.
“I used to be known as a ‘Love Man,’ because I would always be singing to the ladies,” Malcolm says in an engaging Jamaican accent. “But after I started traveling I started to write about everything … everyday troubles or, say, apartheid in South Africa.”
To compare his early recordings, such as the hits “Fatty Fatty Bum Bum” and “Miss Wire Waist” with their catchy but frivolous lyrics, to his most recent release, “Babylon Tough,” a thoroughly unsentimental look at the realities of western life, is to realize just how far Malcolm has come as a writer. His light, lilting tenor voice may be best suited to romantic ballads, but he’s not content to sing of romance alone. “My music,” says bluntly, “has gotten a lot more seri …Read full article
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