Good Thing Going: Reggae Historian Beth Lesser’s New Sugar Minott Book

Words by Jesse Serwer, via The Hype Life and Shimmy Shimmy

Last summer reggae lost one of its great, and most unsung, icons in sweet-voiced Sugar Minott. Here’s how we remembered the dancehall pioneer’s life at the time. Beth Lesser, the author of books including 1989’s King Jammys and 2008’s Dancehall: The Story of Dancehall Culture, has sprung into action to correct any historical oversights with The Legend of Sugar Minott & Youth Promotion, a 212-page tome on “Sugar Booga” and his Youth Promotion soundsystem. Lesser is a longtime friend of Minott’s–she even married fellow reggae documentarian David Kingston (with whom she founded the ’80s-era reggae fanzine Live Good Today) at a Youth Promotion dance at Sugar’s house in 1986–so we can say with absolute certainty that no one was better equipped to tell this crucial story.

For more on Ms. Lesser and her adventures in reggae/dancehall documentation, check the thorough interview our pal (and fellow reggae fanzine publisher) Suze just published over at Shimmy Shimmy.