ABOUT EASY STAR

In its 12 year history, New York City’s Easy Star Records has produced two of the best-selling and trendsetting reggae albums of the decade – the Easy Star All-Stars’ Dub Side of the Moon and Radiodread – while building an international brand that has come to signify quality and class. The independent label has created an impressive body of work that includes those above-mentioned in-house productions, along with progressive recordings from envelope-pushing acts like John Brown’s Body and Ticklah; reissues of classic reggae from the vaults of Sugar Minott and Linval Thompson; new music from reggae legends The Meditations and Sister Carol; and collaborations with international reggae stars like Luciano, Anthony B and Morgan Heritage. Easy Star has steadily built a scene that extends in many directions, following any path where reggae leads, bringing together young producers and musicians, reggae stars, and even artists outside the genre who have been influenced by Jamaican music, like Citizen Cope and blues musician/musicologist Corey Harris.

The label manages its in-house musical collective/touring band The Easy Star All-Stars, who in the past five years have played over 200 shows, including tours in the US, UK, France, Italy, Israel, Ireland, Brazil, Argentina, Mexico, Turkey, Egypt, Chile, Poland, Croatia and Canada. Dub Side of the Moon and Radiodread have formed the backbone of a growing franchise of reggae re-inventions of classic albums, with the next entry in the series due in 2009. Easy Star has also developed a strong sense of how to market reggae to both core genre fans and a mass audience, leading to recent work consulting on marketing for albums such as Gov’t Mule’s Mighty High. Easy Star’s musical director, Michael Goldwasser, produced albums in 2007 for Corey Harris and Israeli band Hatikva 6, bringing the Easy Star sound further outside the family. And Easy Star has raised its profile as a lifestyle brand through events such as Easy Star Reggae Tuesdays, which was one of the longest-running weekly reggae parties in New York from 1998-2004.