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When NL Dennis was singing in a recording studio with Toots and the Maytals, Bob Marley stopped by to listen, and praised Mr. Dennis’s delivery.
Today, Mr. Dennis lives in his native Jamaica and joins hundreds of Jamaicans who come to Vermont every summer in search of better paying work. Most of them work on vegetable farms and at apple orchards. Mr. Dennis works as a reggae musician. On Saturday, June 25, at 6 p.m. he will perform a public concert with his band at the Southampton Arts Center.
While in the U.S., Mr. Dennis sings and plays guitar in the Thunderballs, and he wrote all the songs on their CD. He met the band’s keyboard player, Peter Eisenkramer, of Vermont, in Jamaica in the early 1990s, when Mr. Eisenkramer was there on vacation and heard Mr. Dennis play. Mr. Eisenkramer invited Mr. Dennis to visit him in Vermont and perform there. Mr. Dennis agreed and applied to the U.S. government for a visa—it took more than 20 years to be approved. Last year, he finally came to Vermont. The Thunderballs performed several concerts in the Brattleboro area. Everyone in the audience danced and applauded enthusiastically.
Mr. Dennis’s parents were farmers in Jamaica. They grew potatoes, pumpkins, cassava, peas, plantains, bananas and other crops that they sold to a cooperative, which sold them to grocery stores and restaurants. His father sometimes also worked at a sugar factory.
There was no electricity or running water in their home, so when Mr. Dennis was a child he would carry the family’s water on his head from a stream to their house. They didn’t have a car and could not afford a bus ticket, so if they wanted to travel it was on foot or by donkey.
Mr. Dennis built a guitar when he was 8 years old, and he taught himself to play it. In school, a teacher helped him enter a national singing competition. He won. Now, he is 63 years old, “but I play like I’m 19,” he said in a recent interview.
He has been able to support himself almost entirely with his music, though he has occasionally worked other jobs. “I live in a poor community, where people are just barely surviving. I help them when I can, but I am struggling myself,” he said. He lives in a rural part of the Hartford district of Jamaica, near the town of Savanna-la-Mar.
Some of his songs are political and include calls for justice. “I’ve never been involved in politics directly,” he said. “But sometimes you see the situation and you want to do something. My song ‘We Want a Righteous Government’ was inspired by that kind of feeling.”
The Thunderballs featuring NL Dennis will perform Saturday, June 25, at the Southampton Arts Center, 25 Jobs Lane, Southampton. Admission is free, though a $10 donation is suggested. Visit southamptonartscenter.org to RSVP and visit thunderballs.net to hear the band’s music.
on Jun 18, 2016