From Snoop Dogg to Snoop Lion? Trailer: 'Reincarnated'

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE | July 31, 2012

Media Contact: RORY AHEARN | VICE | rory@vice.com

ENTERTAINMENT ICON SNOOP DOGG UNVEILS REINCARNATED PROJECT AND EXPLAINS SNOOP LION

Partners with VICE on Multi-Platform Project that includes New Album, Feature-Length Documentary, Photo Book and Non-Profit Initiative

Riveting documentary accepted to the prestigious Toronto International Film Festival and will premiere on September 7th and 8th, 2012

Los Angeles, CA --- Last night, Snoop Dogg unveiled the meaning behind his newest moniker, Snoop Lion, and explained his latest project, REINCARNATED. Set at New York’s famed Jamaican themed record store and restaurant, Miss Lily’s, Sway Calloway (MTV, SiriusXM) hosted the event with Snoop Lion, Diplo, Ted Chung (Snoop Dogg’s Manager, Stampede Management) and Suroosh Alvi (co-founder, VICE Media).

In conjunction with VICE, the youth media brand, the REINCARNATED project embodies Snoop's recent stay on the island of Jamaica. The project includes a reggae album produced by Diplo and the Major Lazer production team, documentary, photo book and a non-profit initiative called Mind Garden.

Initially set as a trip to focus on his music in an isolated environment, the journey quickly morphed into both a musical and a spiritual awakening. “For this project, I had no intention of making a reggae album, but the spirit called me. Anytime the spirit calls you gotta know that it's serious and real,” recalled Snoop on both the Rastafarian culture and the Jamaican people who embraced him along the journey of being reincarnated into Snoop Lion.

Snoop revealed the story behind his adopted moniker "Snoop Lion" – a title change that garnered massive press attention when announced through his social networks last week. The title was given to him by the revered Nyabinghi upon his arrival to the island. The name is derived from the Lion that appears on the Imperial Ethiopian flag and remains an honored symbol of former Ethiopian Emperor Halie Selassie I and the Rastafarians themselves.

“I didn't want to be Snoop Dogg on a reggae track...I wanted to bury Snoop Dogg and become Snoop Lion, but I didn't know that until I went to the temple and received the name Snoop Lion from the Nyabingi priest,” said Snoop. “From that moment on, I started to understand why I was there and was able to create something magical in this [Reincarnated] project...something I haven't done before in my career.”

Snoop recently released his first single “La La La” from his REINCARNATED reggae album to rave reviews. In celebration of his song and to commemorate 50 years of Jamaican independence on August 6th, Snoop has made 1962 copies of limited edition 7" vinyls to distribute.

The riveting documentary was also just accepted to the prestigious Toronto International Film Festival and will premiere on September 7th and 8th, 2012.VICE documented Snoop’s very personal journey throughout Jamaica and his time spent with Rastafarian elders. The documentary, REINCARNATED, features never-before-seen images of Jamaica, as Snoop was granted unprecedented access to Rastafarian culture, temples and Jamaican culture.

Not only was his time documented on film, but also through awe-inspiring photos of Jamaica's rich landscapes and beautiful people. The photos were captured by Los Angeles photographer, Willie T, and will be released as a coffee table book through VICE.

While in Jamaica, Snoop was deeply affected by the people of Jamaica and also discussed his role in the development of Mind Garden, a non-profit social initiative focusing on community gardens that will provide essential nourishment to the kids in Kingston, Jamaica. For Mind Garden, Snoop partnered with renowned businessman Jean Paul DeJoria and his JP’s Love, Peace and Happiness Foundation.

A History of Haiti and the Legacy of Violence in Jamaica on the February 13th 'Left of Black'

A History of Haiti and the Legacy of Violence in Jamaica on the February 13^thLeft of Black

Host and Duke University Professor Mark Anthony Neal is joined in-studio by Laurent Dubois, the Marcello Lotti Professor of Romance Studies and History at Duke University   A co-director of the Haiti Lab at the Franklin Humanities Institute,  Dubois discusses his new book Haiti: The Aftershocks of History (Metropolitan Books).  Dubois gives historical context to the longstanding relationship between the U.S. and Haiti.  Also the author of Soccer Empire: The World Cup and the Future of France, Dubois also talks about how he uses athletics as a gateway into political and cultural engagement. 

Later, Neal is joined via Skype© by University of Pennsylvania professor of anthropology Deborah Thomas.   The author of Exceptional Violence: Embodied Citizenship and Transnational Jamaica and co-director and co-producer of the film Bad Friday: Rastafari After Coral Gardens, Thomas discusses common misconceptions and stereotypes against Jamaican people.  Thomas dives into the history of the Rastafarian Movement and their oppression.  Lastly, Thomas talks about her film, and how her background as a dancer inspires her scholarship.

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Left of Black airs at 1:30 p.m. (EST) on Mondays on the Ustream channel: http://www.ustream.tv/channel/left-of-black. Viewers are invited to participate in a Twitter conversation with Neal and featured guests while the show airs using hash tags #LeftofBlack or #dukelive. 

Left of Blackis recorded and produced at the John Hope Franklin Center of International and Interdisciplinary Studies at Duke University.

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Follow Left of Black on Twitter: @LeftofBlack

Follow Mark Anthony Neal on Twitter: @NewBlackMan

Follow Laurent Dubois on Twitter: @SoccerPolitics

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Trailer: 'Bad Friday': Rastafari After Coral Gardens

A documentary film directed by Deborah A. Thomas and John L. Jackson, Jr.

Producers: Deborah A. Thomas, John L. Jackson, Jr., Junior "Gabu" Wedderburn, and Junior "Ista J" Manning

Musical Director: Junior "Gabu" Wedderburn

SYNOPSIS

For many around the world, Jamaica conjures up images of pristine beach vacations with a pulsating reggae soundtrack. The country, however, also has one of the highest per capita murder rates in the world, and the population is actively grappling with legacies of Western imperialism, racial slavery, and political nationalism – the historical foundations of contemporary violence in Jamaica and throughout the Americas. 

BAD FRIDAY focuses on a community of Rastafarians in western Jamaica who annually commemorate the 1963 Coral Gardens "incident," a moment just after independence when the Jamaican government rounded up, jailed and tortured hundreds of Rastafarians. It chronicles the history of violence in Jamaica through the eyes of its most iconic community, and shows how people use their recollections of past traumas to imagine new possibilities for a collective future.

Murder Music: On Jamaican Dancehall and Homophbia

Jamaica’s dancehall music is being blamed for the country’s violent attacks on gays. But there are many who don’t see the music as homophobic, only the battle cry of a changing nation.

Murder Music
by Ilan Greenberg

On a breezy evening in mid-April a committee boasting some of Jamaica’s most venerable citizens convened an open-air meeting under the auspices of the department of government at the University of the West Indies. After almost a year and a half of sifting through charts and listening to old vinyl recordings, the committee co-chairmen, which included the president of Jamaica’s National Gallery and a former finance minister, presented to several hundred members of the public their list of the top one hundred Jamaican songs. Pandemonium ensued.

Audience members objected to the choice for number one song, “One Love,” Bob Marley’s sweet paean to togetherness, as being too saccharine. People jammed the open microphone to point out the under-representation of female artists. Others testily questioned why so few of the chosen top songs reflected reggae’s subversive, anti-establishment politics. Several people demanded a more transparent process. But the most passionate complaint from the crowd—which included members of the media, faculty in the university’s department of reggae studies, music industry figures, and ordinary music fans—was voiced over and over again from younger members of the audience: Where on this top one hundred list were the dancehall songs?

Dancehall is a beat-heavy, lyrically-dense, energetic, and synthesizer-driven music that has much in common with American hip-hop. It evolved in the early nineteen nineties out of the classic reggae of Bob Marley and Jimmy Cliff—the often feel-good, reefer-party music championing the Rastafarian visions of social justice and pan-African celebration, which had powered Jamaica to worldwide recognition in the nineteen seventies and had catapulted Jamaican musicians into the far reaches of global iconography.

Surging in popularity worldwide, dancehall acts routinely fill venues like Madison Square Garden. The biggest dancehall performers sell out their U.S. concert dates within minutes. In Japan some forty thousand fans roar to the beat of dancehall acts in a sold-out stadium concert staged every September. Dance moves pioneered by dancehall fans frequently turn up in the videos of American hip hop stars.

But dancehall is hugely controversial—inside and outside Jamaica. Detractors echo many of the same complaints voiced against American hip-hop, including that the music promotes misogyny and violence. But the brief against dancehall far exceeds criticism inveighed against any other genre of popular music. Dancehall is a crucible for Jamaica’s irreconcilable notions of class and masculinity and identity. Most of all, dancehall is accused of fomenting vicious anti-gay violence.

Read the Full Essay @ Guernica