Looking back at the first week of FIRST – A Jamaican Magazine

© Biggy Biggz

Tuesday last week, FIRST Magazine returned back online and has since then produced more good content than The Jamaican probably ever will.

Here’s a list of my four favourite stories so far:

First recommends: Suzie’s Bakery patties – it’s harder to find tasty patties in Kingston than it is to find incorrupt Jamaican police. Good to know that Suzie’s Bakery is out there to serve high quality uptown patties straight out of 20 Barbican Road day in and day out.

FIRST likes: Maxine Walters’ Dancehall poster collection – while there’s nothing more depressing than looking at the cover designs of today’s reggae and dancehall albums, it’s almost always a pleasure to look at the simplistic posters announcing dancehall sessions alongside Jamaican roads. Filmmaker Maxine Walters is obsessed with them and currently shows her collection of 500 of the posters at the Real Artways Gallery in Hartford, Connecticut.

The cancer in Jamaican music – Sherman Escoffery argues that the main reason for the decrease in quality of Jamaica’s musical output (“These songs are so bad they can’t even make it to the Harbour View roundabout much less to get on a plane to go anywhere outside of Jamaica.”) is mainly due to deejays’ musical illiteracy and the loss of competent musical collaboration because of selfishness of producers.

FIRST People: Devon Gordon’s art of extreme patience – FIRST People used to be an amazing series of portraits already back then when FIRST was actually a printed magazine (of which we hunted down every single issue when we were in Kingston back then). FIRST people is now back in the blog edition and kicks off with a look at the work of Devon Gordon – a Greenwich Park Road mural which he has been painting for 16 years now and his story of history in the making.

 Leave a comment