Files from the artiste's archive

Song: Grow Better

Artist: Rivah Jordan

Live @: EXIT Festival 2015

I'm sure every musician has a library of files floating around on various desktops and hardrives. Some of us still have Cassettes, DAT's, 2inch tapes, vinyl, cd's and even minidiscs knocking around with unreleased songs and unrealised ideas.

Every few months or so I again undertake the never ending task of file sorting. From my time running independent labels and projects to being a recording artist myself and the son and brother of recording artists and producers, I have quite a few files here.

As 80's babies my brother and I always joked about while seriously wanting to have what the elders called: 'A D. Brown catalog' or 'A Gregory Isaacs catalog' of songs. These artists along with others we admired like Sizzla and Beenie Man have so many songs they could be the only act on the Reggae stage of any festival and we loved that about them. Record labels always told us to focus on one style and genre of music for the sake of marketability but we were like: 'F**k dat! D Brown catalog man seh! What difference does it make if we sing, rap or deejay anyway! It's all just riding a beat.'

While I find myself giving that same advice to younger artists now I also find myself stumbling onto songs I completely forgot I recorded. Being able to load up a playlist of songs that goes over 10 hours in both Reggae and HipHop is a personal achievement I'm quite proud of. However the work that goes into turning ideas into songs and songs into products and products into money and money into success is the treacherous road that has so many artistes not achieving the levels of success that they aspired to, and limited me personally to only releasing 7 albums in a 15 year career.

The process of making an album or ep and even a single often means that many creative ideas will get left out of the final product. Songs will get dropped as will whole projects of work for artistic, financial or political reasons and as a result most creators have a catalog of unreleased and unfinished works stashed away. Some will form the foundations of future projects and products while some will never see the light of day or to an appreciative audience find their way.

So as I reshape ideas and sort through random files of live shows, mixes, instrumentals and tracks, I found a file of live audio tracks from Exit Festival I forgot we had recorded. Thought I'd put one up of Rivah Jordan Killin it! Click the pic or check it out on the page for free downloads.

https://www.matthewradics.com/free-downloads