Generations, guests on Monday cruise concert

Gramps Morgan was at the keyboard, while his son, Jemere embraced Morgan Heritage lead singer 'Uncle Peetah' onstage. Live concert closer Stephen Marley also presented generation next in his son, Jo Mersa, to an enthusiastic audience on the open-air main stage on the 12th deck of the Norwegian Pearl on Monday night.

It was not only a night of reggae generations, but also guests as most of the standout performers introduced a musical pal or two on the opening concert night of the 2015 Welcome to Jamrock Reggae Cruise. When the persons who would have been the guests were not there, as in the case of very strong concert series first time performer Protoje, who ensured that the audience knew about Chronixx's input as he did Who Knows. There was accompaniment in the flesh for Protoje as well, Ky-Mani Marley joining him for their ode to the lady who was in love with the Rastaman.

A measure of the audience's commitment was not only that they stuck around through a few extended band changes, but also maintained a very high level of general enthusiasm on a line-up where Protoje and Morgan Heritage were followed by Maxi Priest, and after Stephen Marley had ended with One Love, Stone Love Movement, with Geefus and Rory at the controls, took over and rocked a numerically reduced, but very responsive, audience.

Maxi Priest and Stephen Marley had their guests, the former doing an extended run with deejay Beniton (aka Jack Frost) which whipped the audience into a frenzy (the bass line of Housecall, originally done with Shabba Ranks) was sufficient to induce screams. Stephen Marley had a couple members of Jah Army with him on his musical recruitment drive, Spragga Benz (who injected Rasta Run the World into the mix) and Damian 'Jr Gong' Marley.

Shinehead had an early-morning showing, sound system style, on Kingston 21 sound system in The Atrium on level 7, concurrently with Stone Love in the main performance area five levels above.

Stone Love started with the rockers of the rhythm to The Promised Land and included Dawn Penn's No No No, Ini Kamoze's Worl a Reggae Music, Jr Gong's dub plate Stone Love A Di Standard (a take-off of Welcome to Jamrock) among the specials in the mix. So was the Wayne Wonder and Buju Banton dub, Forever Young, as well as Capleton's Tour on the Corduroy riddim, the Showtime juggling included as they upped the tempo and kept the cruisers very happy under the dark sky way into the morning.