Christian sure of dancehall control - Lloyd Evans invites Holy Spirit into 2B Grove Road

On Friday night live performance and recorded music returned to 2B Grove Road, St Andrew, as the first Fridays at the Grove featured Ken Boothe, Inna De Yard Band and selectors Welton Irie and Gabre Selassie. However, when the early part of the dance was paused for Boothe to perform, the event’s organiser, Lloyd Evans, invited another presence into the venue — the Holy Spirit.

On the night, Evans, of Blue Mountain Music, said it was the venue’s return after about 15 years, and he later told THE STAR that the break was because “I dropped out of the music business, period. I just did not feel there was any growth. There was a connectivity between myself and my Holy Father. I became born again.”

And in returning to the Jamaican popular music space, which he had operated in since 1983, Evans spoke to a well-known man of the cloth.

“When I felt the urge I went to my pastor, Al Miller. I said, ‘the space can’t overwhelm me. The space cannot make me do anything I do not want to. I can control it',” Evans said. 

Miller gave his approval, and Evans went ahead. A few months before last Friday’s event there was a Christian-based gathering at the address Evans refers to as Grove Road, Kingston, 2B, with singers and prayer warriors. And although the performers are not gospel artistes, Evans said: “You won’t find anyone come here and cursing. You won’t find anyone disrespecting women.”

“You have entered, for want of a better term, holy ground,” he said. 

It is a location that persons such as Sizzla and Luciano, whose performance names were given to them by Homer Harris at 2B Grove Road, trekked in their very early musical days. The roster of Jamaican popular music performers who Evans has worked with ranges from Barrington Levy, Tenor Saw, Super Cat, Joseph ‘Culture’ Hill and Cocoa Tea to, as Evans put it, “everyone.”