Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry’s Widow To Create Off-The-Grid Community To Honour Reggae Legend
Mireille Perry, the wife of Reggae legend Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry, is actively involved in completing the construction of LSP Paradise community, the eccentric producer-singer’s legacy project in Hanover, Jamaica.
“We started to build the LSP Paradise community, the New Ark, it’s going forward and people are helping. Everything is done from natural material, from bamboo, using stones, everything we find on the land. We’re building small cottages so people who are interested can come and do permaculture, and learn how to treat the bamboo etcetera. Later on, it will have art house, and a studio, just as Scratch intended,” Mrs. Perry informed DancehallMag.
LSP Paradise is one of Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry’s legacy projects and involves the creation of an off-the-grid 3o acre community in Hanover, to enable him to get away from what he had described as “this Babylon Madness”.
Mrs. Perry hopes that in the future volunteers will be able to teach students at the community how to plant properly using permaculture and fertilize crops naturally using animal droppings. Permaculture is an approach to land management and settlement design that adopts arrangements observed in flourishing natural ecosystems.
“LSP will be a self-sustaining environment with solar energy power and everything,” Mrs. Perry said.
The LSP Paradise community was a project that was very dear to the philosophies of the late producer. He had announced the project in 2020.
“I AM SOON GOING TO JAMAICA TO START A SELF -RELIANT COMUNITY TO ESCAPE THIS BABYLON MADNESS! I want to make a YouTube channel that follows every step from the beginning: Choosing the land…preparing it for permaculture and farming…building a new art house and studio…and everything happening on the way,” he wrote on his Instagram page over a year before his death.
Residents of Hanover were hoping that the legacy project would be located in the community of Kendal, where he was born, and still has relatives. She did not disclose the actual location of the community for privacy reasons.
AUTOBIOGRAPHY
Mrs. Perry also intends to pursue writing an autobiography that will revolve around their exciting life together.
“I’m going to write a book about everything that was going on in his life and my life, and its gonna be good, and then we hope we’re going to get a deal for the movie,” she told DancehallMag.
Mrs. Perry said the producer’s estate is being ‘managed well’ in terms of royalty payments etcetera, and she has hired “someone who is keeping to keep track of the albums and co-ordinating development the Youtube for LSP community which we are building, show people the steps and the website with everything on it”.
“So it is work in progress,” Mrs. Perry revealed.
In December 2019, Perry released his 12-track Heavy Rain album which debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard Reggae Albums Charts and went on to become his first No. 1 album in his 60-year career, also making him the oldest artist to top the chart.
He could repeat the distinction this year as he has a number of unreleased works, which are slated for release.
“We’re trying to co-ordinate the albums that are coming out that he was voicing with people in the last two years cause everybody wanted to put it out in the Spring, but that would be too much. So the biggest one is coming out with Tricky label, on his label, then some smaller productions. Scratch also made three songs and voiced for Track Johnson, he is very big in the USA,” she said.
Tricky, whose real name is Adrian Nicholas Matthews Thaws, is a British record producer and rapper.
In September last year, a song called ‘Holy Dub’ featuring the late producer was released. The song was part of the Canadian metal band New Age Doom band’s 6 track collaborative project with the Reggae legend titled Lee “Scratch” Perry’s Guide to the Universe, which was announced just weeks before his death.
Perry died on August 29 at the Western Jamaica hospital at the age of 85, reportedly from an undisclosed illness. Mireille had been married to Perry for over three decades. Perry is survived by his wife, and two children from his marriage to her.
The eccentric Scratch was widely hailed as one of the most important creative, artistic and musical figures to emerge in the latter half of the 1900s.
The Grammy award-winner had the distinction of producing more than 1000 recordings during his career, which spans more than half-a-century. These include some of Bob Marley and the Wailers’ best early recordings – including the Soul Rebel and Soul Revolution albums and Small Axe, Duppy Conqueror, Jah Live, Punky Reggae Party, and Rastaman Live Up singles.
Perry notched one Grammy win in 2002 for the Reggae album, Jamaican E.T.
He has four other Grammy nominations one in 2014 for Back on the Controls; in 2010 with Revelation; in 2008 with Repentance, in 2007 with The End Of An American Dream.