The Jamaican dancehall was a space in which people once went to dance, but the days of couples ‘renting a tile’ seems a thing of the past. That is of great concern to singer Isiah Mentor.
His latest song, Dance With Women Again, longs for the good old days when partners flocked the dance floor. He produced the track for his Village Roots Records.
“I see a serious drift in connecting with each other, and music plays a pivotal role in connecting people spiritually, socially, emotionally, and intimately. The music is my attempt to make people aware that we are losing our humanity if we are not connecting this way,” Isiah Mentor noted.
Dance With Women Again is done to the timeless beat of Toots And The Maytals’ 54-46. That song was released in 1968 when the rocksteady craze was making way for another dance-friendly sound called reggae.
Isiah Mentor started his career as Lilly Melody in the mid-1980s, another transitional period in Jamaican music. It was the dawn of dancehall music’s digital era that produced a rush of computer-driven rhythms, led by the Sleng Teng, produced by Lloyd “King Jammy” James.
For artistes like Isiah Mentor, that was the golden age of dancing.
“The older days, if you will, was a time of innocence and natural love and respect, where man and woman dance and have fun. I see where we are drifting far away from that,” he said.
Dance With Women Again is his follow-up to Demons Among Us, another self-produced song.
— By Howard Campbell
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