With rocksteady celebrating its 60th anniversary this year, Leroy Sibbles, one of the genre’s biggest artistes, took his Party Time Tour to Japan.

The singer/bassist did 13 shows in that country from April 17 to May 5.

Backed by local bands, Sibbles did club dates in as many cities, including major reggae centres of Tokyo, Osaka, Hiroshima, and Yokohama. They were his first shows in the Asian country since 2017.

“The Japanese people were overjoyed to have me and my music from the Heptones On Top album which was regularly brought to be signed by me after performances,” he told the Jamaica Observer.

Released in 1969 by Studio One, Heptones On Top is a collection of songs The Heptones recorded at that company during the 1966-68 rocksteady era. It contains classics such as Party Time, Sea of Love, Equal Rights, and Heptones Gonna Fight.

Most of those songs were featured in his set during the tour, which also made stops in Sapporo, Ibaraki, Sendai, Kagawa, Fukuoka, Okinawa, Senshu, Hyogo, and Aichi

The shows also saw Sibbles educating fans about his career with The Heptones and the many songs on which he played bass.

“I did a bass segment of my contribution to the history and contribution towards the foundation of reggae music and how my basslines influenced the music from that time to this time,” he said. “They were overwhelmed by the experience, and I was filled with emotion, receiving gifts from fans. Even a person from Russia brought me gifts and said he had been a fan for over 20 years.”

The Heptones, which also included Earl Morgan and Barry Llewellyn, were one of many harmony groups that dominated rocksteady.

Sibbles, the trio’s main songwriter and arranger, also played bass on numerous Studio One sides, such as
What Kind of World by The Cables, Mr Bassie (Horace Andy), Door Peep (Burning Spear), and Queen of The Minstrels (Cornel Campbell).

He first performed in Japan during the early 1980s when that country began hosting the JapanSplash festival. At the time, the country emerged as the biggest market for Jamaican music, especially in Tokyo and Osaka.