Tresure Island

Charting Island’s rise from its very origins in to the modern age, War Ina Babylon not only provides a fascinating insight into the changing sound of Jamaican music over the past 40 years, but also brings together some of the greatest ska, rock steady and reggae recordings of all time.

Charting Island’s rise from its very origins in to the modern age, War Ina Babylon not only provides a fascinating insight into the changing sound of Jamaican music over the past 40 years, but also brings together some of the greatest ska, rock steady and reggae recordings of all time.

Bessie Jones, John Davis, and the Georgia Sea Island Singers gained wide renown during the 1960s and ‘70s for their powerful performances of traditional songs from the African American Gullah Geechee community on St. Simons Island, Georgia. Most in the group were born and raised on St. Simons, and could trace their ancestry to the enslaved West and Central Africans who worked on the island’s cotton plantations. Throughout the ‘60s, the Georgia Sea Island Singers were prominent voices in the civil rights movement, bringing hundreds of years of Black musical tradition to bear on a pivotal time in American history. This previously unheard recording captures their complete Friends of Old Time Music concert of April 1965, at which they were joined by legendary bluesman Mississippi Fred McDowell, cane fife player Ed Young, and folklorist Alan Lomax, who acted as emcee.