VP Records launches Reggae Trail

April 08, 2019

VP Records has announced the launch of the first phase of The Reggae Trail, an interactive map of locations in New York City that helped make the music genre an integral part of life in the city over the past five decades.

"The first phase of the project, launches in conjunction with Record Store Day 2019, includes New York area reggae and Caribbean record stores with significant in-house record labels," said Carter Van Pelt, VP Records’ director of catalogue development.

"These include several dozen initial locations, chosen from literally hundreds."

"The idea began ten years ago when I pinned a set of locations in Google Maps of the New York area addresses I found on vinyl records," said Van Pelt. "I didn’t initially take it beyond several dozen locations, but I could see the potential. Richard Lue, VP Records’ director of business development, had a similar concept that showcased the role of VP Records in the history of reggae in New York. The Reggae Trail is a combination of these ideas."

The Trail’s first phase highlights top record stores that brought the music to the people starting in the early 1960s. One of these is VP Records, which moved from Kingston, Jamaica, to Brooklyn and eventually Jamaica Queens in the late 1970s, becoming a major distributor and label in the global spread of reggae.

After 40 years, VP Records’ flagship retail space is one of the oldest continuously operated records stores in the northeast United States.

Meanwhile, VP Records is proud to announce that Christopher Martin’s album And Then will be released May 3. And Then is the follow up to Martin’s debut full length-album, Big Deal, which reached the top 5 on the Reggae Billboard charts in 2017. 

 

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