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This summer the Caribbean will be sizzling with entertainments, from mainstream jazz to the tantalizing sounds reggae, dancehall, calypso, soca and R & B. In addition the music visitors can expect to enjoy the plenty of sun, sand and good food that the Caribbean has to offer. This year’ Caribbean jazz and music festivals will feature what is likely the most diverse musical presentation yet, with a variety of the most popular Caribbean destinations getting into the act, so to speak. The presentations planned at various Caribbean islands even include a music festival dedicated to blues CEM rounds up 10 of the best music festival across the from Aruba and Anguilla to St. Kitts and St. Lucia ARUBA: Soul Beach Music Festival 2015 - MAY 20-25, 2015 This Memorial Day Weekend bash will headline Trey Songz and Charlie. Join Soul Music Lovers from around the world and take part in amped-up nightclubs, sizzling wet and wild beach parties beach parties, and music concert in this five-days of power-packed event. www.soulbeach.net BARBDOS – Reggae Festival - April 19, 2015 - April 26, 2015 The Barbados Reggae Festival is a mixture of the sweet sound of Reggae Music with the compliments of the soothing Caribbean Sea breeze and atmosphere! It is a week of spectacular events and the most popular reggae event on the island. Crop Over Festival –June 27 – August 3 The Crop Over Festival in Barbados which ends with the spectacular Carnival/Kadooment Parade is the season used to celebrate the ending of the local Sugar Cane harvest, and is distinctly unique from the Carnival festivities in other Caribbean countries. CURACAO: International BlueSeas Festival – My 7 - 9 It’s a celebration of “traditional and gentrified” jazz music where on Thursday 7 and Friday 8 May, nine artists will give free concerts in the streets of Punda, while on Saturday 9 May the festival will close with two concerts on the Kleine Werf, the quay in the port of the St Anna Bay. Blues Brothers, and new artists Kat Riggins, The Reverend Peyton’s Big Damn Band and Moreland & Arbuckle. http://www.curacaoblueseasfestival.com/ North Sea Jazz Festival – August 29 -30 Now in its 5th year this Dutch island’s soul, jazz, hip-hop and R&B festival will include acts such as Bruno Mars, Chaka Khan, Dianne Reeves, Nile Rodgers and Chic, and Juan Luis Guerra on three stages. This is one of the Caribbean’s priciest music fests, but with such star wattage, Sea Jazz offers plenty of bang for your buck. http://www.curacaonorthseajazz.com/nl/ .JAMAICA: Reggae Sumfest – July 12 – 18 Now in its 21st year, the bass-driven Montego Bay bashment traditionally features local reggae and dancehall artists (Rohan Marley, Sean Paul, Buju Banton) alongside international stars (Mary J. Blige, Usher, Jay-Z), and this year The Voice season five winner Tessanne Chin will grace the stage in front of her home crowd. SAINT LUCIA: Saint Lucia Jazz & Arts Festival – April 30 – May 10 The 24th edition of the Saint Lucia Jazz & Arts Festival is slated for April 30 to May 10 at various locations. Performances will be set against the iconic and historic Pigeon Island National Landmark backdrop, along with other scenic vistas across Saint Lucia, showcasing an innovative infusion of Music and Arts designed to highlight the island's rich historic and cultural legacy. Recently added to the lineup were Grammy Award-winning R&B singer and songwriter Chrisette Michele, and Trinidadian soca singer and songwriter Destra Garcia. Other featured performers will include the iconic Jamaican reggae musician and actor Jimmy Cliff; Jon Secada, a two-time Grammy Award winner; American rapper Flo Rida; two-time Grammy nominee Joey DeFranceso and pop singer Robin Thicke. http://stluciajazz.org/ TRINIDAD & TOBAGO: Tobago Jazz Experience – April 19 -26 The weeklong festival is a fusion of music, heritage, cuisine, hospitality and everything that is Tobago, with performances slated for the Tobago coastal town of Speyside, Tobago’s Pigeon Point Heritage Park and at other sites across the dual-island nation. The event will offer a truly outstanding array of artists, including recording star and actress Jennifer Hudson, legendary R&B band Kool and the Gang and highly regarded singer-songwriter Jill Scott. Recently added to the lineup were Jamaican dancehall stars Romain Virgo and Busy Signal; also slated to perform are Miguel, David Rudder and soca star Olatunji. The event is sponsored by Tobago’s Division of Tourism and Transportation. http://tobagojazzexperience.com/ ST.KITTS: Music Festival - June 25 to 27 In its 19th year, the Festival features traditionally features a wide range of musical styles including R&B, jazz, hip-hop, reggae, rock, calypso, gospel and contemporary music. The lineup this year promises to be equally eclectic, with Trinidadian soca star Machel Montano, Chicago’s Bill Champlin, legendary reggae singer Freddie McGregor and more. http://stkittsmusicfestival.com/

Reggae history opened its books at the Hendrickson Auditorium on the grounds of the Jamaica College campus in Kingston, Jamaica, when Chronixx delivered the third leg of his Captureland Tour on Saturday night. The 22 year old powerhouse graced the sold out crowd with a memorable 180 minute live performance, with cameos from Jesse Royal, Kelisa, Keznamdi, Kabaka Pyramid, and his father, Old School Dj Chronicle. Delivering a flawless live set, Chronixx firmly established himself as the New King of the Dancehall, delving into an extensive catalog, thronged by dub inspired remixes and cover medleys. From Roots inspired Rockers, Dub driven solos, Dancehall emission collabs, Chronixx trodded across the expansive soundscape of Reggae's genealogy in a nearby three hour live set. The audience was filled with a wide cross section of Jamaicans, in some cases entire family clusters, young and old, who thoroughly enjoyed the coronation of Dancehall's new king. For many of his elder fans, this is the first concert in recent memory, (since Bob Marley's "One Love" peace concert for some), have they felt such an energy, and from such a young Reggae artist. Some compared him to the late great Hugh Mundel, others firmly crowned him, "the real king of the dancehall", as the world embraced the new poster child of homegrown Reggae music. The event was streamed live from his website, and broadcasted by the Caribbean based cable network, Flow, into five other regional territories. The four date tour traversed Jamaica, kicking off on March 11th in Negril, before heading on to St. Elizabeth last Friday, and Kingston tonight before wrapping up in Portland tomorrow, Sunday the 15th of March. Chronixx, an alumni member of Billy Mystic's Jamnesia music incubator, follows closely behind Dub Rockers Dubtonic Band, whose pioneering Neo-Reggae wave was further catalysed by the release of Nomaddz live album, "The Trod", in 2010. Since then Protoje, Jah 9, Raging Fyah, and Chronixx have broken new ground within the Neo-Reggae genre, but Chronixx's live exhibition at Jamaica College has surely raised the bar, and set the standard for all that is to come in this new and exciting transition, currently taking place on Reggae's ever changing frontier. Top40 Charts

Rihanna has been announced as the new ambassador for Dior, making her the first Black woman to be a face of the iconic fashion house. She will star in the fourth episode of Dior's "Secret Garden" video series. In addition, Rihanna will appear in a print campaign. Both the video and images will be shot by Steven Klein and debut later this Spring. She joins actresses Jennifer Lawrence, Marion Cotillard and Natalie Portman - who are all current faces of different elements of the Dior collection. This is not Rihanna's first outing for a fashion house; she has already posed for Gucci, Emporio Armani and Balmain.

Seventeen-year-old Dipti Budhrani will represents St. Maarten at the 24th annual Miss India Worldwide pageant in September. This year's pageant will take place at Lalit Hotel, Mumbai, India. Budhrani was chosen by the Miss India St. Maarten pageant franchisee, Sri Trishul Foundation, to represent the island at the pageant where her beauty and talent will be showcased along with her Indian culture. A role model for her community, Budhrani founded St. Maarten's first ever Model United Nations Club that participated in the BOSMUN 2015 conference. She serves as her school's Interact Club president, and co-president of her senior class. Budhrani has the guidance of former Miss India St. Maarten 2014 Kiran Jivnani and the Sri Trishul Foundation as she prepares for the pageant in the coming months. The Sri Trishul Foundatio n encouraged the community to support Budhrani on her way to the pageant. She will be an ambassador for the island, sharing St. Maarten's culture along with her Indian roots.

Had it not been for her big brother, Paula Madison’s reconnection with her maternal grandfather’s relatives scattered around the world, including China, might not have been brought to the screen. Raised in Harlem with brothers Elrick and Howard Williams, Madison recalled being often told by their Jamaican-born mother, Nell Vera Lowe, that she was separated from her father, Samuel Lowe, a Jamaican-Chinese shopkeeper, at age three. He went to China in 1933 and never returned. Nearly four years ago, Madison quit her high-profile job as an NBC Universal executive vice-president to research her family’s roots. December 2012, Paula Madison and American relatives meet Chinese relative in first family reunion. (Photo courtesy Madison Media Management) In December 2012, she and her brothers, along with 16 family members, went to China to meet with relatives there. The trip culminated in a reunion with a documented lineage dating back 3,000 years to 1006 B.C. The reunion led to Madison and her brothers going into business with cousins in China, some of whom plan to come to Toronto for the first time this summer for a family gathering with relatives here. With Jamaican-born Canadian-based Jeanette Kong as director, an 88-minute film was shot in Toronto, when Madison and her brothers were here for a Hakka conference in the summer of 2012; Mocho in Clarendon, Jamaica where Lowe owned his first shop; in St. Ann’s Bay, where he ran a successful business and in Shenzhen and Guangzhou in China. Finding Samuel Lowe: From Harlem to China, was the ReelWorld Film Festival opening night movie last week. Elrick Williams, an entrepreneur and investor, is the president and chief executive officer of the Africa Channel, the first American television network to showcase English Language programming from Africa. He convinced his sister that the family’s history was worth sharing with a wider audience. “In truth, I resisted it because I figured it was going to be very personal and difficult for me to emotionally get through,” Madison told Share while in Toronto last week for the premiere. “It turned out to be all of that, but still my brother insisted we shoot it as a documentary because he felt there were so many of us who are the descendants of Chinese labourers who went to the Caribbean and don’t know how to connect with their families in China. He thought it would be instructive and illustrative for us to shoot it not just for ourselves, but for at least another half million Black Chinese roaming around the Americas.” Samuel Lowe (Photo courtesy Madison Media Management) Madison said her mother, who migrated to the United States in 1945 at age 26, had a longing to find out what happened to her father. “Our mother raised us to believe that nothing was more important than family,” she said. “The irony was if that was the case, where was our family? I decided to answer that question not just for my brothers and me and our own descendants, but because at the point where I found them in 2012, my mother had already been dead for six years. I am however a believer in that a person is not just physically present here, but that doesn’t mean that they are really dead. “As long as you have good memories and thoughts about a person, then they cannot possibly die. So I felt that even though my mother is not alive, that by finding or reconnecting with her family, it would bring my mother some peace. I majored in history and Black Studies at Vassar College and studied the Caribbean and China. What I realized in 2012 was that I was probably preparing myself my entire life to undertake this search for my grandfather’s descendants.” Madison said a book on the odyssey, which will be released on April 14, will be different from the documentary. “I have actually researched and documented my grandfather’s life not only in Jamaica but when he returned to China in the middle of the Japanese War,” she said. “Because he was an overseas Chinese and a capitalist, I talk about the targeting that the government subjected him and his family to. I also talk more about my mother’s life and how she came to be one of the first to enter the United States under the listing of the Chinese Exclusionary Act which the U.S. passed in the 1800s…it just gives a look at my family in the past and present. We have history that goes back 3,000 years and for every generation, the people are listed, where they lived, what were their occupations and who was favoured by what emperor. All of that is part of our family’s history.” The Toronto Public Library has shown an interest in hosting a book reading and tour in addition to screening the film. VIDEO: Paula Madison explains why she thinks it is important to explore family stories. RON FANFAIR

Keston Rosales; a smooth voice and easy-going style are his trademarks. Music is a lifelong passion for Keston Rosales . Having rendered an array of musical selections for over 22 years, Keston Rosales has graced Trinidad and Tobago, the Caribbean region and many countries around the globe with a unique sound that creates a unique ambiance for his audiences. Rosales hails from the historical town of Moruga located along Trinidad’s southern coastline where in 1498 Christopher Columbus sighted the Trinity hills which inspired the country’s name. His humble upbringing in this sleepy fishing village has influenced his musical style which has a very earthy, rootsy vibe. Rosales gives credit also to his mother Theodora Rosales who nurtured his love for music from a tender age, “ I grew up listening to my mother singing and dancing to the late Teddy Pendergrass and Luther Vandross with their groovy soulful music which deeply influenced the way I sing and perform today.” Rosales began singing with his church choir at the tender age of ten. Like fine wine, Keston has matured over time into a highly talented, multi-faceted musical professional. Among the cords in his arc are those of singer, performer, songwriter and producer. Thanks to his involvement with the group H2O Phlo he was introduced to new musical genres. Later, the live band known as 2G opened the way for a fusion of musical genres which has positioned Rosales as an all-round artiste who breathes, eats and sleeps sensational music inspired by R&B as well as Pop music with Caribbean influences. Not one to miss a beat, Rosales seizes the opportunity to acknowledge his religious upbringing as a major factor fuelling his versatile career. His ‘chance meeting’, as he calls it, with artists sharing similar aspirations eventually led to the formation of the group H2O Phlo. The release of their first single entitled ‘A Little Closer’ (2003) really propelled them into stardom. The success of this single opened doors and led them to share the stage with a host of international artistes including James Ingram, Peabo Bryson, Lionel Richie, Sting, Ziggy Marley, John Legend, while featuring front and centre for many concert events locally. Rosales is proud to have been awarded, alongside H2O Phlo, two (2) gold medals for ‘World Music’ and a silver medal for ‘Original Music’ at the World Music Championship of Performing Arts in Hollywood, California. So what’s next? Fans can expect nothing less than exceptional quality as he continues to blend Caribbean flavour with sounds we know and love. Rosales says, “Along this musical journey I've grown mentally and spiritually. Traveling has opened my eyes in a new way. There’s nothing more exciting than meeting new people, hearing their stories and being inspired. As such because of this journey I am well prepared to face what's ahead.”

Digital Vibez Entertainment " Hot Steel Riddim " officially premiered worldwide on such stations as Hitz 92FM in Jamaica, Vibes 106.1 FM in Gambia, Flames Radio UK, Tropixx 105.5 FM in ST Maarten, XFM 95.1 in Ghana, Africa and in the U.S on Ninja Crown (Mighty Crown) "International Roll Out" and "Loaded Thursdays". The feedback by dj's and fans has been more than positive while the riddim has become a much requested on international airwaves and spun various viral videos. But it seems that with the release of her latest single " Scamma" , outspoken Grammy Award and certified triple-platinum Lady Saw ruffled some feathers, and although "Hot Steel Riddim " has been blazing the airwaves, "Scamma " has been omitted from the playlist. The multi-talented star who has broken down several barriers for women in dancehall, never shies away from addressing controversial issues. On the hit track, Lady Saw sings “Mi want a scamma man from mobay .Cah mi hear she dem money se a waymi woulda gi him my body every day cah mi know she money afi pay." But as her publicist Latoya McKay explains "it's funny to me, it's like they didn't listen to the whole song because at the end she says she doesn't want a scamma man, its illegal and she doesn't want to go to jail" In a recent release to the media, the dancehall Queen explained the song "I record the song “ Scamma” , because scamming is a big thing right now. I came up with the title after performing at a show in Mobay." The producers of the riddim admit to be surprised and taken aback by some of the responses and feedback from stations. "The song is just a fun song that's taking too seriously, Its just Lady Saw being her self and putting a twist on a Controversial Topic, If you listen to the song from start to the end, you would hear that she's just playing around with a controversial topic, To also add, the song has no issues with any Radio Station Worldwide just in Jamaica" - Gary ''Shanguly'' Samuels "Hot Steel Riddim" also features multi-award winner Capleton "Stay Suh", Bramma "Fashion Police", up and coming artist from Capleton's David House crew Ffurious with "Out A Me Life", rising star Da'Plan "Waste A Time" and CeeGee "Gweh" and will be available on iTunes in the spring. Lady Saw Explains "Scamma" on Radio https://soundcloud.com/digitalvibez/lady-saw-interview-rscamma

Protoje breaks down the history and process behind the making of the his 3rd Studio Album titled ANCIENT FUTURE. Directed and Edited By: Yannick "The Therapist" Reid Shot By: Nickii Kane and Yannick Reid

The reggae triad of Treehouse! representing Myrtle Beach, South Carolina just released their latest LPLifted on March 10th – their third studio album in five years. Following the band's self-titled debut in June 2011 and their sophomore album Growth of May 2013, Lifted continues to prescribe a leisurely lifestyle to Treehouse! listeners and promote self-improvement along the way. Notably, the LP was recorded and mixed by Wolfgang Zimmerman and mastered by More Sounds Studio's Jason “Jocko” Randall, a man who's resume includes John Brown's Body, Easy Star Records and more. With psychedelic motifs and a heavy walking bassline, each track offers encouraging lyrics towards betterment Lifted combines elements of jam band, reggae, ska, and rock executed through a wide array of instruments to create its essence. With psychedelic motifs and a heavy walking bassline, each track offers encouraging lyrics towards betterment with titles like “Embrace the Change”, “Follow Your Calling” and “On The Road”; even though “Growth” labeled their last album, it is apparent that 'still growing' is Treehouse!'s current theme. The first single being advertised off the LP is “Look into the Stars”: a lively track with hip-hop style vocals, a unique horn riff, a funky beat and an electric guitar interlude which allows an edgy break from a somewhat poppy melody. The band plans to be on the road broadcasting their music until next November, so look for Treehouse! on your local marquees. The newest album is attainable on all digital outlets and with the band's “get 'Lifted'” mantra in mind, it is evident that the boys of Treehouse! are determined to climb all the way up the rope-ladder of success. By Kristy Rose

Aswad became one of the UK’s top reggae bands in the 1980s, introducing strong R&B and soul influences to their music. With number one hits including ‘Shine’ and ‘Give a little love’, they have produced 21 albums and have been playing live since the mid 1970s. The British stalwarts are set to play a free concert at Joys Live bar on Saturday April 11th For more information visit www.joyslive.com

Dancehall artists Konshens and Busy Signal collaborated on a new single “Soca People”. The song was produced by Subkonshus Music and Monstapiece Entertainment. Listen to the song below....

Reggae sensation Shaggy is back on the Billboard top 40 charts with his new single, “I Need Your Love (featuring Mohombi, Faydee and Costi)”. Up seven places to #39, it commanded 777 weekly spins. This is Shaggy's ninth song on a Billboard chart. The single which was released in September 2014, racked up 800,000 YouTube views in less than one week and currently has over 20 million views , making Shaggy one of Jamaica's most successful artistes to date. Shaggy recently premiered the video for a new single, Picture, featuring Melissa Musique, exclusively via the leading music identification app Shazam