Reminiscing on African Star, Star Brown, Stuart Brown, a pioneer of reggae music in Jamaica, Toronto, Africa, and the world<\/p>\n
This man ran the Sankofa Bar at 1653 Eglinton west for a couple of years, where he was there nightly, almost 7 days a week at times, promoting live reggae music, DJ and sound system culture.<\/p>\n
African Star is an icon in this reggae iwah and many here in Toronto have no clue who and what he is.\u00a0 They just see this quiet, humble man walk in and start spinning his music and before long, everyone is up and dancing.\u00a0 Like a humble Shaolin monk his humility is his calling card.\u00a0 Other DJs are spinning tracks that Star is responsible for cutting and they have no clue!\u00a0 My task is to educate all DJs and selectas who they are playing with when they step up to the turntables or CD players and mixers they did not know before.\u00a0 I want fans of reggae music to know when they are in the presence of \u2018reggae royalty\u2019.\u00a0 African Star is Reggae Royalty!<\/p>\n
I met African Star officially for the first time ~ obviously known of him for years ~ NYE 2013 as he came on invitation to spin from Briggidier Kingsly of Jah International sound system along with Soul Survival.\u00a0 I listened to and watched his work, and it is blatantly obvious that this idren was an original!\u00a0 I didn\u2019t know his full history ~and I still don\u2019t ~ but I had to dig a little deeper to find out about Star and quickly realized that I was dealing with someone of legendary status.\u00a0 His work and contribution to reggae music knows no bounds.<\/p>\n
A man whose phone list include personal friends like Snoop Dogg aka Snoop Lion, DMX, Russell Simmons, Capleton, Super Cat, Ninjaman, Shabba Ranks and many more because he actually worked with these people over the years.\u00a0 Some like Capleton, Early B, Shabba and Ninja, African Star aided or launched their careers, and these artists will tell you so themselves, except for Early B who is unfortunately no longer with us.\u00a0 These things I have learned recently from Star himself yet went home and researched them for myself on the net and found them to be exactly the truth.<\/p>\n
For instance, the song \u201cTour\u201d<\/em><\/strong> by Capleton, (used in this bio pic) one reggae version that featured Sly & Robbie, was remixed by Lil Jon from a Slick Rick tune for Star while he was signed to the Def Jam label.\u00a0 Yes, African Star was signed to Def Jam and still maintains his relationship with Russell Simmons.\u00a0 EVERY selecta \/ DJ in the WORLD has this tune in their box and light up nuff dance with it!\u00a0 Raspect to de Fyah Man, Ras Shango, Capleton working with African Star at that time for this gem.\u00a0 A mix off roots, Rastafari, dancehall and hip hop.\u00a0 Got to love the innovation!<\/p>\n Since that initial meeting where all I did was hail him when he walked in and no other contact until months later where I\u2019d call him from time to time to come and spin tunes at The Lion\u2019s Den and he has never refused!\u00a0 With all of his big name, he comes to simply spin music.\u00a0 The man LOVES to spin music!\u00a0 He LIVES to spin music!\u00a0 With everything else that he does, he just loves to spin to 5 or 5,000…makes no difference to him.\u00a0 He is truly a unique individual.\u00a0 He kept it simple and still does. DJ play music!\u00a0 A dat him do!<\/p>\n Knowing how camera shy and \u2018word shy\u2019 he is, I decided to go hang with him up on Eglinton at his store \u201cStaff of Life\u201d where I get great knowledge of health foods, nuts, Morenga seeds, silver water and a host of herbal uses and listened whenever he spewed experiences that seemed too farfetched to believe yet you know from his history that he actually lived that life.<\/p>\n A man who has lived from Houston, Texas \/ New York \/ Ghana, Africa\u00a0 \/ Jamaica and Canada and spun music as far as Japan several times among other European spots.\u00a0 A man who has paid the ultimate price for his music when he was shot five times back in his Houston (1982ish) days, spent eight days in a coma and when he woke, put on his clothes, avoided the authorities and hospital staff walked out of the Houston hospital, got on a plane and flew home to Toronto to seek \u2018home care\u2019 confirmed story by his brother Rico (Richard).\u00a0 I saw all the bullet holes!<\/p>\n His recovery is still ongoing.\u00a0 As an ex-Olympian qualifying for the 1976 Montreal games to represent Jamaica in cycling, Star was also a strong swimmer as well as a footballer.\u00a0 His years of training and fitness, and dogged determination has aided in his recovery to date and where he was once bent over from the injury and pain and unable to straighten his right hand, he now walks straight upright and right hand straightened.\u00a0 He still does not have a hundred percent use of his right arm so he and \u201cSugar Finger\u201d, Star\u2019s toaster, who will work the set very seamlessly night after night and blaze up any dance!<\/p>\n Why did you move to Ghana, Star?\u00a0 \u201cGhana is the gate of Zion\u201d, African Star said to me.\u00a0 The music gave him a greater, deeper insight to this world and he went where it took him….Ghana \/ Africa where he stayed for almost five years.\u00a0 They still miss him.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Reminiscing on African Star, Star Brown, Stuart Brown, a pioneer of reggae music in Jamaica, Toronto, Africa, and the world This man ran the Sankofa Bar at 1653 Eglinton west for a couple of years, where he was there nightly, almost 7 days a week at times, promoting live reggae music, DJ and sound system […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":50,"featured_media":8750,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[240,239],"tags":[82],"class_list":["post-8757","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-canadian-news","category-international-news","tag-featured"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sandbox.reggaenorthca.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8757","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sandbox.reggaenorthca.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sandbox.reggaenorthca.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sandbox.reggaenorthca.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/50"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sandbox.reggaenorthca.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8757"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sandbox.reggaenorthca.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8757\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8758,"href":"https:\/\/sandbox.reggaenorthca.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8757\/revisions\/8758"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sandbox.reggaenorthca.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/8750"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sandbox.reggaenorthca.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8757"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sandbox.reggaenorthca.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8757"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sandbox.reggaenorthca.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8757"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}