Mento is the name given to Jamaican folk music that emerged in the 1940s and 1950s. Similar to Calypso, which originated in ...

Before reggae, rock steady, or even ska, mento ruled Jamaica's musical consciousness. Originally a rural folk music, coalesced from African and European influences, mento took on a more modern tenor ...

Reggae music became popular in the late 1960s, when young people were excited about it and gravitated to the new sound. The artists were mainly grass-roots people who used their voices to articulate a ...

Mento takes centre stage in this year’s Groundation series organised by the Jamaica Music Museum. For curator and director of the museum, Herbie Miller, the decision to focus on mento — one of the ...

Can a septuagenarian Jamaican mento group called The Jolly Boys, who once played for Errol Flynn and are now covering songs by Iggy Pop and Amy Winehouse, bring success to the just-launched GeeJam Re… ...

In Jamaican music’s immediate family, there are reggae, dancehall, ska, rocksteady, dub and mento and Nyabinghi. Close cousins? That would be hip-hop, reggaeton, EDM and Afrobeats. Learn about all the ...

The Jamaica Observer’s Entertainment Desk continues with the 50th of its biweekly feature looking at seminal moments that have helped shape Jamaica over the past 60 years. UNLIKE his contemporaries, ...

A barbarously sticky afternoon in Jamaica and I'm in Kingston inside a windowless room with a low ceiling and brown carpet on the walls watching five old men. They are all in their 70s – except the ...

For its latest release, local Latin ska reggae group Mento Buru pays tribute to country legend Merle Haggard and his final recording, "Kern River Blues." The new five-song EP "Kern River Blues" is no ...