Collie Buddz in Płock: “Come Around” and reggae with live backing from The New Kingston Band

This distinctive artist will come to Płock with The New Kingston Band to present material already well known in Poland from “Come Around”, whose title track is one of the singer’s biggest hits. Collie has numerous collaborations to his name, with one of the brightest unquestionably being his work with Sizzla and Shaggy on “Mad Mad World”. It appeared on Shaggy’s latest album, “Intoxiciation”, and became an enormous hit not only in the Caribbean but also in the USA and many European countries, including Poland. The track receives regular airplay on numerous Polish radio stations.

Collie Buddz was born in New Orleans and grew up travelling between Bermuda and heavily urbanised Toronto. Perhaps this explains why Colin Harper, his real name, is difficult to categorise. Collie is currently one of the Jamaican scene’s most distinctive singers. Hip-hop and soca can both be heard in his music, but its foundation is firmly reggae. Although Buddz knows the rhythm of ghetto life intimately, he has ambitions to move beyond that reality, an uncommon phenomenon in Jamaica.

He was born in 1981, at the dawn of a new era symbolised by two important events: Bob Marley’s death and Ronald Reagan’s election as US president. Dancehall and sound clash’s evolution into an important movement at the turn of the 1980s and 1990s offered young Collie the ideal route towards discovering his musical identity. Growing up, he discovered acclaimed dancehall artists including Buju Banton, Bounty Killer and Beenie Man, who later became his principal inspirations.

“When Beenie Man and Bounty Killer were waging wars of words and facing off at clashes, and when I saw a clash featuring Kilimanjaro and other big sounds, everything changed: the whole scene and the music took on a new meaning for me. Clashes and lyrical battles have been part of my life from early childhood right up to now,” Buddz says in an interview.

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