Rock Steady movie ready for the big screen

By Basil Walters Observer staff reporter
Sunday, June 28, 2009

If everything goes according to plan, Jamaica's gift for its 46th anniversary of independence, is the local premiere of the latest movie on Jamaican music entitled Rock Steady the Roots of Reggae. According to Canadian born producer Robert Boulos, what started as a documentary has not only evolved into a full-length flick, but promises to be better than all other of such projects featuring Jamaican music.

Bongo Herman among the music personalities slated to be in the flick.

"We've just completed the rocksteady movie that we've been working on for about two years here in Jamaica entitled Rock Steady - The Roots of Reggae. We are trying to release it for August (for the independence celebrations) for Jamaica and the Caribbean and internationally it should be coming out in September," Robert Boulos told the Sunday Observer.

"We finished the editing in last December...and we're now ready to distribute the movie worldwide on the silver screen. So it's not just a straight DVD kind of documentary, it's really going into the cinemas. We're very excited about that. It's a very different project from all the documentaries about this music that have been done before," explained the excited producer.

The music flick with a budget of US$1.5M jointly funded by Canada and Switzerland, has in its cast some of reggae's great stalwarts, including the incomparable Ernie Ranglin, Sly Dunbar, Robbie Lyn, Gladdy Anderson, Headley Bennett, Lloyd Parks, Calvin Cameron, David Madden, Stranjah Cole, Leroy Sibbles, Derrick Morgan, Marcia Griffiths, Judy Mowatt, Dawn Penn, Tamlins and Bongo Herman. But that's not the complete list of stars.

"We feel that we have something pretty good," Boulos enthused before adding "We have an incredible line-up of artistes from the musicians to the singers. From Marcia Griffiths to Judy Mowatt, to Leroy (Sibbles) to Stranjah Cole to Gladstone Anderson to Bongo Herman to Scully, we have everybody, even Hucks Brown came back to the island for that."

The entire cast is in the island this weekend rehearsing at the Alternative Music complex for two upcoming important assignments.

"And the other thing is that right now we are here for few days before the whole crew, musicians and singers go to Montreal for a premiere of the film and at the same time we've booked them for a big concert at the jazz festival which is going to be about 120,000 people... its the main event. The jazz festival in Montreal is the 30th year. This year they have Stevie Wonder opening up the festivities and they have the Rock Steady All Stars performing," Robert Boulos said.

*(Update)Since heard that a cd/dvd digi-pak is due for release in August this year.