Sonny Bradshaw blowing up a storm on the trumpet. Bradshaw was one of the first people to play popular Jamaican music over the local airwaves. - File Today, we carry the third part of a week-long interview series with Sonny Bradshaw, done by staff reporter Tanya Batson. The series started on Monday in The Gleaner. Part two was carried in yesterday's Star.
TB: With all the work you've had to do, there are a lot of gigs, you've done tremendous...
Bradshaw: I've done everything my dear.
TB: ...other work. How did you manage to balance that life and family?
Bradshaw: I always had supporting family. Always. The present one, and the one before. Always had it. They helped me in every way. I was, perhaps you don't know, but I was at the start of the Jamaican popular music, and JBC you ever heard of it?
TB: Yes. A little station that we used to have.
Bradshaw: It was one of the two radio stations in Jamaica. I started there, in radio and television, I learnt radio there, apart from my early days of making radio, and I learnt radio producing and everything else there. So, I was the first to present Jamaican music on radio Jamaican popular music, and that's a very important term. Jamaican music was always there, but the popular Jamaican music, which at that time was called the ska.
On that station I used to play popular Jamaican music, and out of that has come all these nice great stars, Alton Ellis, Bob Marley, all of them, Toots and the Maytals, the works. They were the first set of Jamaican music, popular music.
TB: Now, I'm going to play a little bit of the Devil's advocate, and segue from that. One of the arguments is that the, well not so much the demise, but the decline of jazz from the forefront, was in part because of the rise to prominence of the Jamaican popular music.
Bradshaw: Yes! Yes, that's true. That's right. That's why I say I was there.
TB: So, don't you feel a bit responsible?
Bradshaw: Yes, I'm a bit responsible too. I accept responsibility for bringing Jamaican popular music to the Jamaican public. I assume that responsibility. As far as jazz is concerned, I was always a jazz man. The jazz had probably declined over a certain period, but it has been re-discovered and jazz is the thing now.
Jazz... I put it this way, jazz is black classical music. Because jazz used to be a dance music. In the Sonny Bradshaw days, when we are the band on the road, people used to dance to jazz. They used to dance, dance! Not stan' up eena dancehall. But jazz has elevated itself from being a smoky place down in the cellar, into the same level as white classical music. White classical music, black classical music. And those two are on the same plane now. Because you have to be good to play any of them. You have to be good. You have to be trained.
TB: Since we started talking about jazz, I'm going to go over to Ocho Rios Jazz Festival, which is your youngest baby.
Bradshaw: Yes.
TB: Because you've had several babies.
Bradshaw: Yes, yes, yes.
TB: So, what exactly inspired its beginning?
Bradshaw: My present wife was one influence. She wanted it done. Because, out of Jamaican came reggae, reggae, reggae, and the showplace for reggae, was Reggae Sunsplash. I was working with the Ministry at that time, The Ministry of Welfare and supp'm, supp'm, supp'm, and they were promoting the ska, because it's a wonderful music. It ahhm, let me see how to put it... let me see now...
Well because Reggae Sunsplash was representing the popular music of the day, in Montego Bay, Kingston had all the other entertainment facilities, sports, football, cricket, and all that. Ocho Rios had nothing. And so we decided that we would make Ocho Rios the jazz centre. So we started the festival in Ocho Rios because the other areas of the music and entertainment industry were elsewhere. They can go on.
That's why I don't want to use the Ocho Rios Jazz Festival to be a pop music festival. Because the pop music is already established. And now it's Reggae Sumfest, which has taken over from Reggae Sunsplash. They're covering that quite well. And in Kingston they're covering all the other all the other entertainment. See theatre, we have more theatres now than any other time, and plays, everything.
But Ocho Rios, it don't really have nothing you know, but a lot of hotels and the sand and the sea, and every other country has that. So Ocho Rios should be so glad to have the jazz festival here. And so we have persevered with that. That's why our festival is a jazz festival. It's not a pop music festival or a music, music festival.
Tomorrow in The Star : Sonny Bradshaw continues his tale
