What keeps tourists coming back to Jamaica each year and keeps ‘yaadies’ from migrating is the palpable fiery beat, vibe and culture of our people. It pulsates through every thread of our people and their expressions– through our music, dance, food, beer, rum, everything. This page is dedicated to showcasing all the tours and places which capture that spirit, as well as those which shed insight on Jamaica’s colourful past.
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February around the world is a special time for people of African descent, such as myself. We celebrate the achievements of our race and our rich heritage, while pausing to reflect on the atrocities of chattel slavery which our ancestors endured and which interrupted our history for three centuries. However, in Jamaica, February has much more special meaning.
Continue reading “Reggae Month in Jamaica”
Kingston is the capital city of Jamaica, located on the island’s south-eastern coast on one of the world’s largest natural harbours. This vibrant city is home to the most recording studios per capita in the world, and gave rise to six distinct musical genres– namely ska, mento, rocksteady, dub, reggae and dancehall. For this reason, Kingston was awarded UNESCO Creative City status in 2015. Kingston has famous museums which immortalize the origins of our musical genres but our music does not stop there. The Rastafari religion, reggae music and its raunchier cousin dancehall are intimately tied to the fabric of the Jamaican culture and its people. Named for the lyric in artiste Vybz Kartel’s song Dancehall (2015), Cyah Stall is an exhibit which narrates Jamaican dancehall as a musical genre, aesthetic, language and resistance. Here’s why you should catch it if you can.
Continue reading “‘Cyaa Stall’: A Jamaican Dancehall Art Exhibit”
I’m a city girl with a love for the country and thankfully in Jamaica, the country is never too far away. A short drive of fifteen minutes can land you in lush peaceful 360° greenery, seemingly far away from the hustle and bustle of city life. Every time I visit the country and admire the slow laid-back pace of life, I can’t help but think that this is how we were meant to live. I’m happy to report that I’ve found a new chill spot near the capital city of Kingston, Jamaica for us nature-lovers to unwind and reset. Kingston Reggae Garden is a restaurant, bar and oasis in Golden Spring, St. Andrew which opened in May 2021.
Continue reading “Kingston Reggae Garden, Saint Andrew”
I’ve had the pleasure of taking all three Jamaican rum tours and I even took one of them more than once, so I’m qualified to pit them against each other, right? Rum is a quintessential Caribbean alcohol. Our history is unequivocally tied to it as for three hundred years, Caribbean society revolved around sugar plantations. It was on these plantations that millions of enslaved Africans forcibly brought to the Caribbean would convert sugarcane, a species of tall perennial grass from the genus Saccharrum, to sugar and rum. In this blog post, I’ll give an overview of the process, share the three main remaining distilleries then compare them so you may choose the best tour for yourself. Perhaps I’ll even convince you to take them all, you rumaholic.
Continue reading “Comparing 3 Jamaica Rum Tours: Which Is Best?”
Nestled deep in the Queen-of-Spain valley of Trelawny, Jamaica lies the Hampden Estate. Hampden Estate was established in 1753, and still produces rum to this day using centuries’-old traditions with just a few modern upgrades. This relatively small sugarcane estate and rum distillery occupy roughly 3,500 acres and have remained in continuous operation for over 260 years, making some of the world’s most sought after and award-winning rums. Their aged rums are bottled as Hampden Estate rums, while their unaged rum is sold as Rum Fire white overproof rum. Interestingly enough, majority of the rum produced by this estate is exported to Europe, and the waitlist for a shipment of Hampden rum can be as long as two years. Very little is available on the local market so many Jamaicans are unfamiliar with the Hampden brand, but the Hampden Estate Rum Tour will change that.
Continue reading “Hampden Estate Rum Tour, Trelawny”
Rum is an alcoholic beverage that is intimately intertwined with Caribbean history and culture. That history is cruel and downright abhorrent, where millions of West Africans were taken against their will to the Caribbean to work as slaves on sugar plantations, growing sugarcane from dawn till dusk, reaping, grinding and boiling sugarcane juice to make muscovado sugar and molasses, the latter of which was then fermented to make rum. Our ancestors likely never got to consume much of it, but now rum is the liquor of choice for their descendants and remains a quintessential part of the Caribbean spirit. There are at least three surviving Jamaican sugar estates and distilleries to this day, namely the Appleton, Worthy Park and Hampden Estates. I’ve taken the Appleton Estate Rum Tour twice and had a great time with each visit, therefore I feared another Jamaican rum tour would be repetitive. Well, thankfully that was not the case. In fact, I even preferred this experience. Here’s why.
Continue reading “Worthy Park Estate Rum Tour, Saint Catherine”
Peter Tosh is a platinum-selling Grammy award winning artiste and is one of the most talented reggae musicians to emerge from Jamaica. He got his claim to fame from the Wailers, a trio which also consisted of Bob Marley and Bunny Wailer. Peter Tosh was born in 1944 in Westmoreland, Jamaica’s most western parish and his life was brought to a brutal abrupt end in 1987 after a home break-in and robbery-turned-murder. Tosh had a rough start with an unstable family background, shuffled around from relative to relative based on circumstances but his musical talent emerged early despite the upheavals. Tosh is a self-taught guitarist and keyboardist who got his first real taste of music and performing when he moved to Trench Town as a teenager and met his fellow band-mates in the early 1960s. He taught them how to play, and they dabbled in ska and rocksteady before finding their calling in reggae, infusing their tunes with spiritual and political messages from their newfound conversion to the Rastafari faith.
Continue reading “Peter Tosh Museum, Saint Andrew”
Time sure flies when you’re having rum, I mean, fun. 2019 was the inaugural staging of the Jamaica Rum Festival and social media would not let me live it down that I missed it! The pictures looked epic and even my friends and colleagues were speaking about it for days. Thus, I eagerly anticipated the second staging, knowing that the event would be here to stay given all the success it had in its first showcasing and I was not left disappointed. The Caribbean produces some of the world’s best rums and our history is intricately intertwined with the spirit. Rum production dates back from the 17th century on plantations where my enslaved African ancestors toiled to produce this lovely liquor from sugarcane and its by-product molasses, and rum became the region’s chief export product after muscovado sugar.
Continue reading “Jamaica Rum Festival 2020: Recap & Highlights”
‘Jamaica, Jamaica!: How Jamaican Music Conquered the World‘ is the latest art exhibit being shown at the National Gallery of Jamaica. It opened on February 2 and closes on June 28, 2020. It’s one of the most exciting exhibits ever launched by this gallery and was aptly opened in February, locally observed as Reggae Month. This exhibit was previously shown at Philharmonie de Paris in 2017 and titled “The General” after the 1985 hit song by artiste Brigadier. Renamed Jamaica, Jamaica! after gracing local shores, this exhibit documents how the tiny Caribbean island of Jamaica was able to become a global musical force to be reckoned with. The capital city of Kingston and venue of the exhibition is recognized as the birthplace of six distinct musical genres which led to Kingston being designated official UNESCO creative city status in 2015.
Continue reading “The Art Exhibit in Kingston You Need to See: ‘Jamaica, Jamaica’”
Good things in life are discovered by chance, and that’s how I ended up spontaneously visiting the Montego Bay Cultural Centre. On my first ever visit to Jamaica’s second city, my morning commute to school led through the Sam Sharpe Square and I happened to look out the window just as we were passing the cultural centre the first morning. I finished school early that same day and after alighting from a taxi in Downtown, I realized I was on what appeared to be the other side of the building.
Continue reading “Montego Bay Cultural Centre, Saint James”
Adventures from Elle 