Lifestyle

World Mourns Reggae icon Bunny Wailer

Published

1 month ago

March 3, 2021

Reggae maestro Bunny Wailer has passed away on Tuesday after battling an unknown illness.

The Jamaican Culture Ministry said Wailer had been hospitalized in Kingston since December. Bunny was aged 73. No cause of death has been given.

Wailer, who co-founded The Wailers with Bob Marley in the 1960s and helped make the catchy Jamaican beat a global phenomenon.

Wailer, who was born Neville Livingstone in the Nine Mile district, where Marley also came from, suffered a stroke in 2018 and another in July of last year.

He was the last surviving original member of the Wailers. Marley died of cancer in 1981, and Peter Tosh was murdered in 1987.

Wailer, who was a childhood friend of Marley, won three Grammys over the course of his career, and in 2017, he was awarded Jamaica’s Order of Merit, one of the country’s highest honours.

“We remain grateful for the role that Bunny Wailer played in the development and popularity of Reggae music across the world,” Culture Minister Olivia Grange said in a statement.

“We remember with great pride how Bunny, Bob Marley and Peter Tosh took Reggae music to the four corners of the earth,” Grange added.

Marley and Tosh acted as The Wailers’ primary singers and songwriters, but Wailer played a key role in providing harmonies and percussion to the trio’s songs, according to Rolling Stone magazine.

“The Wailers are responsible for the Wailers sound. Bob, Peter, and myself: We are totally responsible for the Wailers sound, and what the Wailers brought to the world, and left as a legacy,” Wailer told Afropop in 2016.

The band’s debut album on a major label, “Catch a Fire,” released in 1973, helped propel the group to international fame.

At one point, that record was ranked 126th on Rolling Stone’s 500 Greatest Albums list. The band’s biggest hits include “Simmer Down” and “One Love.”

After leaving the band in 1974, Wailer went on to enjoy a prolific solo career as a writer, producer and singer of what is perhaps Jamaica’s best-known export.

He drew much praise for his album “Blackheart Man,” which included the song “Burning Down Sentence,” which drew on Wailer’s experience doing a one-year prison sentence for marijuana possession.

“The tracks that were done in ‘Blackheart Man’ were very symbolic and significant to this whole development of reggae music,” Wailer told Reggaeville in 2017.

“I really consider ‘Blackheart Man’ to be one of those albums that the universal reggae world should be focused on,” Wailer said.

Fans in his hometown of Kingston mourned Wailer’s death Tuesday.

Lifestyle

Rapper DMX Hospitalised After Suffering Heart Attack

Published

1 week ago

April 4, 2021

Staff Writer

USA Rapper DMX born Earl Simmons is currently on life support at Hospital in White Plains, New York.

According to reliable press reports, DMX suffered a heart attack Friday around 11 p.m. at his home in White Plains and was taken via ambulance to a local hospital, where he remains on a ventilator, Richman said.

His longtime attorney Murray Richman said he did not know what may have caused the heart attack.

DMX was released from prison in January 2019 after serving a year behind bars for tax fraud.

The rapper burst on the rap scene in the late 1990s with songs like “Party Up” and “Get At Me Dog.” His first five albums debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard charts.

The 50-year-old is also an actor, and has appeared in numerous movies.

Lifestyle

45 Died in Stampede at Magufuli Funeral

Published

2 weeks ago

March 30, 2021

Staff Writer

A total of 45 people died in a stampede during funeral of former President John Magufuli of Tanzania- the country’s Police has confirmed.

“There were a lot of people who wanted to get in the stadium, and some were not patient. They tried to force their way in and that resulted in a stampede. Forty-five died in the accident,” Dar es Salaam regional police commander Lazaro Mambosasa said.

Mambosasa said several dozen were also injured in the crush but most had been released from hospital. Tens of thousands of mourners lined the streets of Dar es Salaam this month to bid farewell to Magufuli, whose sudden death from a short mysterious illness was announced by the government on March 17.

The stampede happened on the second day of tributes at Uhuru Stadium. Magufuli’s body lay in state in the cities of Dar es Salaam, Dodoma, Zanzibar, Mwanza and Geita, before being finally laid to rest in his ancestral village of Chato, in the country’s northwest, on March 26.

Magufuli died aged 61 from what authorities say was a heart condition, after a mysterious absence of almost three weeks, and questions remain over the true cause of his death which the opposition says was from Covid-19.

Lifestyle

Body Of Fallen Magufuli Airlifted To Mwanza

Published

3 weeks ago

March 24, 2021

Staff Writer

Eyes of mourners misted over immediately after a plane carrying the body of the fallen President Magufuli landed at Mwanza international airport around 7:40 a.m local time.

The 5th President of the United Republic of Tanzania’s casket was removed from the Air Tanzania’s plane and greeted by military members.

He was taken from the airport through Ilemela – Pansiasi highway to CCM Kirumba stadium.

Magufuli died late Wednesday aged 61, the then Vice President Samia Suluhu Hassan confirmed in a state television.

African leaders said in their condolence messages the demise of President Magufuli had left a ‘dark’ cloud in the continent.

Thousands of mourners who had laid clothes on the roads and holding palm fronds, besieged the road wailing while running after the hears.

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