Leroy Sibbles To Celebrate 60-Year Career At Kingston Concert

Veteran Jamaican singer Leroy Sibbles celebrates 60 years in the music industry this year, and he’s doing it big with an anniversary concert. 

The near three-hour event, dubbed ‘The Crowning’, is slated for August 31 at the Ranny Williams Entertainment Centre in Kingston.

Celebrating Sibbles’ feat will be fellow artists Marcia Griffiths, Etana, Singing Melody and Duane Stephenson. 

Pre-sold tickets ($5,500) are now available online and island-wide at Fontana Pharmacy, as well as New Kingston’s Exit 21. Showtime will be at 8pm. 

Sibbles’ longevity is not only enriched by his recordings across ska, rocksteady and reggae, but his work as a composer, musician and songwriter. 

Born in Trench Town, Kingston, the singer rose to prominence in the 1960s as one third of The Heptones – laying the foundation for some of his most known work like Party Time, Get in the Groove and Got to Fight On (To The Top). 

His work in arrangement has contributed to several classic basslines in Jamaican popular music. Take, for instance, the Full Up rhythm, which popularised internationally through Musical Youth’s Pass the Dutchie, an adaptation of the Mighty Diamonds’ Pass the Kutchie.

His musical genius extends to other productions like Morgan Heritage’s Down By The River, released in 2003 on the What Kinda World arrangement, originally created by Sibbles in 1968 for The Cables.

Sibbles’ basslines can also be heard on Dennis Brown’s No Man is An Island, The Abyssinian’s Satta Massagana and The Heptone’s chart-topping track Book of Rules. 

Also well-known is the ubiquitous Real Rock instrumental, later voiced by Willi Williams as Armagideon Time and made global by the Clash.