Kava Jah rises to the occasion
A haven for the counter-culture movement during the 1960s, Northern California embraced roots-reggae and Rastafari in the 1970s. The region is still home to a receptive reggae community and roots acts like Kava Jah.
The singer has lived in the city of Santa Cruz for over 10 years. In March, he and his band The Remedy released Rise Above, a six-song EP.
Rise Above contains six songs, which are co-written by Kava Jah and Michael Johnson, an American multi-instrumentalist who produced the mini set. While some artistes took a break from recording during the COVID-19 lockdowns, that was not the case for Kava Jah and The Remedy.
They took advantage of the ‘break’ to write and record songs.
“This EP, I really put in a lot of energy in terms of lyrical and musical. I did it with my own band; we started before the pandemic and continued during it, and recorded a full album and decided we jus’ gonna release an EP first,” the Clarendon-born Kava Jah explained.
Rise Above is his second EP. The first was a self-titled project that came out five years ago.
He worked with a number of established Jamaican musicians on Rise Above including drummers Kirk Bennett (formerly of Beres Hammond’s Harmony House band) and Deleon “Jubba” White (of the Dubtonic Kru) and Bowie McLaughlin, former keyboardist with Grammy winners, Ziggy Marley and The Melody Makers.
Kava Jah (real name Junior Johnson) is from Cumberland district, Clarendon. He was introduced to music by his father, a music teacher and choirmaster. In 2007, he entered the Popular Song Contest with Stand Strong, a song produced by the Gumption Band for their Gumption Productions.
Ten years ago, Kava Jah moved to the United States with Gumption which evolved into the I-Kronik Band with him as lead singer. After four years, he went solo and lay down roots in Santa Cruz.
Room For All, Under Pressure, and Courage are some of the songs from Rise Above.