Dennis Brown

The preservation of the legacy of the Crown Prince of Reggae, Dennis Emmanuel Brown, is on the threshold of a new dimension.

If everything goes according to plan, within a few months, the reggae icon whose 51st birthday, is being celebrated today (February 1), will be further immortalised with the establishment of a 24-hour Internet radio station exclusively for the music of 'D Brown', as he was affectionately called.

There can be no doubt that the thinking behind February being chosen as Reggae Month, is the fact that it is the month in which the king of reggae Bob Marley, the crown prince and other reggae stalwarts were born.

"We're in the planing stages right now of doing an Internet radio station dedicated to the life, times and music of Dennis Emanuel Brown," Patrick Lafayette, honorary member of the Dennis Brown Trust, told Splash.

"Strictly Dennis Brown, 24 hours, seven days per week. Anywhere you are and have Internet access, you can log on, and you just get non-stop Dennis Brown. 24/7 live!," emphasised the former announcer of Kool 97FM.
"We looking to begin within a few more months, and it will be based where we can provide the widest broad ban," Lafayette added.

He said that for the past three years, they have been putting together an audio-biography on the life of Dennis Brown. "Fortunately we have words from Dennis himself, talking about his life when he initially started as a singer all the way up into his 40s and so we have interviewed the people he mentioned, like Byron Lee, Edward Seaga, Coxsone Dodd, Derrick Harriot, Alton Ellis, producer Joe Gibbs," Lafayette said.

The idea evolved out of a series of annual celebrations on 'D Brown's' birthday in the form of marathon radio programmes and simulcast among Kool 97FM the BBC and the London-based Choice FM.

"Over the past three years, when I was with Kool 97FM, we did simulcast with Ranking Ms P from the BBC. That was very very successful. We had the opportunity to hear some of the features we produced aired over the BBC to 80 million people. Later on we extended the works of Dennis (Brown) in terms of the biography. We delved a little bit into his actual philosophy, and focused a little on his alma mater, Central Branch All Age School. The Dennis Brown Trust contributes to the school's feeding programme and provides scholarships to needy students," Lafayette explained
In continuing the Dennis Brown media blitz, a banquet and award ceremony will be held tomorrow at the Ramada Adria Hotel and Conference Centre, Queens, New York. At this gala affair, Una Clarke, Winston 'Merritone' Blake, Ken Williams and Tony Ryan, will be honoured.

Central Branch All Age School will have a stress management seminar for teachers, Joan Higgins of the chairperson of Dennis Brown Trust told Splash. She also said that in the last financial year, the Dennis Brown Trust has assisted 28 students from the singer's alma mater.

In the island recently, was Daddy Ernie from Choice FM in London, and he shared his perspective with Splash. "As you know, Dennis was one of our favourite artistes in the UK, so we got involved with the Dennis Brown Trust. When Joan Higgins asked, I kinda took it as an honour to get involved.
We would go down to the Central Branch School with some books and pens for the kids. We've been doing this for the past five years. Ranking Ms P was the first one who came from the UK, unfortunately she is not well at the moment," Daddy Ernie told Splash.

Michael Thompson of Kool 97FM, gave an insight of what it took to produce those marathon radio shows in honour of the reggae crown prince. "When we did the first Dennis Brown installation, it was a 12-hour programme. We had to be very selective, we didn't want repeats. That Dennis Brown feature took weeks because we went through at least 70 albums and bringing it down to songs which we called Dennis Brown's gems."

And, perhaps the man who can be credited for the idea to take the Dennis Brown's legacy to another level, is veteran broadcaster/musicologist Dermot Hussey, who is now head of programming at XM Radio.

"Dennis Brown once did an interview in which he said the songs that I really love to sing, is not songs like Money in My Pocket, he said, yeh, those songs are great, but it's the classics. And on the tape he begins to sing, Unforgettable.
So he had that romantic thing about him, and then of course he had the skill to be able to sing anything and sing it convincingly well. His was a highly influential and highly unique Jamaican male voice," Hussey concluded.

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