A bust of legendary Jamaican music producer Bunny Lee. It’s one in all many artifacts on the Bunny Lee Museum in Kingston, Jamaica. The ability had a delicate launch on July 1, celebrated as Worldwide Reggae Day.
by Howard Campbell
KINGSTON, Jamaica — The Bunny Lee Museum, a shrine that encapsulates the legacy of one in all reggae’s biggest producers, opened right here July 1, celebrated as Worldwide Reggae Day.
The delicate launch was open to household, shut pals and media on the flamboyant Lee’s former recording studio. Lee, who died in October, 2020 at age 79, produced numerous hit songs by artists akin to John Holt, Johnny Clarke, Roy Shirley, Cornel Campbell and Max Romeo.
Tiffany Thomas, communications officer for the museum, mentioned the power will formally open in February, acknowledged globally as Reggae Month.
Tiffany Thomas, communications officer on the Bunny Lee Museum in Kingston, stands by an organ as soon as owned by keyboard ace Jackie Mitoo.
“That is actually simply to mark Worldwide Reggae Day. It’s been a very long time coming, however we’re pleased with the place we’re as a result of to get and keep a few of the outdated artifacts, took some doing,” she advised South Florida Caribbean Information.
Bunny Lee Museum Artifacts
A few of the gadgets on the museum embrace a Hofner bass guitar, as soon as owned by Robbie Shakespeare of Sly and Robbie fame, who died in 2021. Shakespeare was Lee’s main session musician for a few years.
Different items are a guitar that belonged to Jerome “Jah Jerry” Haynes of The Skatalites, horns owned by members of The Skatalites, and mixing boards Lee used through the Nineteen Seventies, when he had most of his hit songs together with Stick by Me from John Holt, Higher Should Come by Delroy Wilson and None Shall Escape The Judgement by Johnny Clarke.
Generally known as Striker, Lee was from Greenwich City, a seafaring neighborhood in Kingston. He helped promote songs by producers Duke Reid, Leslie Kong and Clement Dodd within the early Nineteen Sixties, earlier than beginning his personal label.
In the course of the late Nineteen Sixties, he had hit singles with Bangarang by Lester Sterling and Stranger Cole, the risque Moist Dream by Max Romeo and Roy Shirley’s Music Area.
A mural with pictures of reggae legends together with Reid, Kong, Dodd, Chris Blackwell and Prince Buster, dominates one of many museum’s rooms.
Bunny Lee was awarded the Order of Distinction, Jamaica’s sixth-highest honor, in 2008.
