Jamaican Legends with Ernest Ranglin, Tyrone Downie and Sly & Robbie

This all-star band containing four famous Jamaican artists serves a remix of the best jazz and reggae. This band was especially created in order to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Jamaican independence.

The guitar virtuoso Ernst Ranglin is generally considered to be one of the founders of popular Jamaican music going from rock steady and reggae to raga. During the past decades he focused mainly on jazz but in the 1940s and 50s he was one of the pioneers and laid the foundations for the sound of ska. During his career he fell back on the African continent by taking up projects with Tony Allen and Baaba Maal.

Tyrone Downie (keyboards & piano), one of the original musicians with Bob Marley and the Wailers and musician with Youssou N Dour will replace his friend Monty Alexander during the Jamaican Legends show at Gent Jazz Festival.

The rhythmical duo Sly Dunbar and Robbie Shakespeare is one of the most famous musical duos. The partnership lightened-up the Jamaican music industry (dus, ska, reggae, raga, rock steady, …) but had its influence far beyond the Jamaican genres as well. As a band they brought out numerous albums and worked together with great names such as Bob Dylan, Sting, Mick Jagger, Herbie Hancock and Grace Jones. The duo has been existing for decades but is still one of the most prominent duos in the music industry.

Jamaican Legends is a chunk of music history joined together in one single band.