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Below are excerpts from the feature articles in Issue #122.
Order this issue to get the full stories.



 

The gift to connect comes from God. As part of the children of my father's church at a very youn age, every Sunday my father would say, "You have to sing to the congregation." And I remember one Sunday I didn't have a song, so I went up to my dad and said, "Dad I don't got a song." He was like, "Make one up!" He said there was like someone out there that lost their job or somebody out there that got cancer, or someone out there on welfare... so he said you gotta make up something to make them feel better. Yeah, he put it all on me, I was like 12. But I understood what he said and when I started to sing, people started smiling and shouting. It's almost like they got connected to something that they needed to hear. It just made me understand how important music was to the world.

    -Wyclef Jean

Not long ago, the sight of someone holding a glowing object down low at a reggae was a sure sign they were covertly cradling a spliff. These days, it's just as likely to be a cell phone. And so it goes with reggae, standing ever strong amid signs of changing times all around us. That abiding strength was very evident on Day One of 2005's Ragga Muffins Festival (the words "Bob Marley," for whatever reason, didn't seem to be part of the event's title this year)...