BJ DjSticky AKA Bluejay Hankins has been trying to get a new press release out of me for weeks. We polished one before I left for Jamaica but it was missing something. He needs a KILLER press release to the reach the estimated 1000 DJs that matter in the global Roots Reggae & Dancehall universe that rules this system like Saturn and Jupiter. Well this is it. This has been quite an adventure. Even writing this press release.
Free Your Mind
Davin Michael Stedman‘s
solo debut song featuring four Jamaican Super Producers:
Anthony Red Rose / Sly & Robbie / Lenky MarsdenThe story behind Davin Michael Stedman & Anthony Red Rose’s ‘Free Your Mind’ is almost too Jamaican to be true. A mysterious man from Seattle finds himself in Sly & Robbie’s studio. It was his first day on the island and he’s not even quite sure how he got there. A Dancehall legend asks him to pull out his guitar and show him what he’s got. The singer pulls out a right handed guitar and plays it left handed. He sings and strums a tune Anthony Red Rose immediately recognizes as a hit song with a simple message that translates to any country on the globe, without changing a word. He adds a beautiful verse and sings along.
The message of the song is indeed universal, but it hits the hardest in Jamaica as a vibrant culture strives to find solutions to an uptick of crime and escalating prices.
Davin Michael Stedman played that song for Red Rose right there in Sly & Robbie’s office at One Pop Recording Studio in Kingston and in the moment of silence that was just the room room catching their breath, Davin wondered if he was unimpressed. To the contrary, Red Rose offered to not only produce the song. He promised to pull together his best team of fellow producers and musicians, including Sly & Robbie and Lenky Marsden to fulfill the vision Red Rose heard as Davin strummed a soaring message of personal liberation. The songwriter from Seattle didn’t even realize his tune was a perfect echo of Bob Marley’s plea on ‘Redemption Song’, when he sang:
“Emancipate yourself mental slavery, none but ourselves can free our minds.”
– Bob Marley, Redemption Song (1979)
Those words were itself an echo of Marcus Garvey, from which Bob Marley recalled from a timeless speech, immortalized in 1937, in of all places Nova Scotia.
The song also marked the beginning of a friendship between two artists of two generations, from two sides of the Anglophone Americas that truly represents the overarching message of this song that is baked in the harmonies and rhythms Red Rose crafted with his life long love of music and 33 years since King Tubby himself introduced Anthony Red Rose to the world with the 1985 hit, ‘Tempo’.
Maybe the message between the lines is this:
That so much of the music and people of the world have common ancestors. When the musical ideas, like long lost cousins come together under the right kind of circumstances and the right intentions, it feels like a miracle. But it’s just music. Yet if you fuse a good song with a great message with a rhythm section as powerful as Sly & Robbie, you can almost see the ripples in time.
“This isn’t just a dancehall song. This is the architects of Dancehall, hearing a song I first strummed one bright morning in Brighton, England, as a Dancehall tune. They made it something I hadn’t even dreamed of, and the reason I made it to Jamaica in the first place is because I dream pretty big. But in the airport as a I left my home in Seattle, I remembered the chords and that melody and I had this feeling it was going to be a something if I could get the song into the right hands. Somehow I did, one the very first day.”
– Davin Michael Stedman
‘Free Your Mind’ is executive produced by Bluejay Hankins. The song is a Sick Donkey Records recording. The forthcoming music video, which was shot in Western Washington and East Jamaica, is being directed and edited by Ryan Cory, with contributions from filmmakers in both regions, including Roy Roy Ce, Sue Mattson, and Enriek Thomas.
‘Free Your Mind’ is the first single from Davin Michael Stedman’s forthcoming debut album West Indian Rock, on tbe heels of four straight regionally acclaimed records with his band The Staxx Brothers.
West Indian Rock is a powerful collage of all of Stedman’s adventures working with legends including Earl Chinna Smith, Stephen Marley’s famed rhythm section Chris Meredith & Squidly Cole, Jah T from The Jolly Boys, and many many more. The album will be released with a book of the same name in January 2019.
The adventure has just begun.
Davin’s new song has been released and is fast becoming a dancehall hit. Listen here on Reggaeville: DAVIN MICHAEL STEDMAN & ANTHONY RED ROSE – FREE YOUR MIND FEAT. SLY & ROBBIE WITH LENKY MARSDEN
– Musician and writer Davin Michael Stedman has many musical ventures and is one of the driving forces behind the Staxx Brothers. He has just returned from three weeks of networking and reporting from Kingston, Jamaica. Next stop, Lagos, Nigeria.
