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THE INTERVIEW CIRCUIT

Artist & sound interviews

The mics turned around: the TV institutions, radio voices, podcasts, YouTube long-form channels and journalists who sit dancehall's artists and sound men down to talk — and in doing so keep the music's own record.

29 records · curated by the atlas editors

publication · Well supportedTVJ Entertainment Report

Television Jamaica's long-running weekly entertainment programme, and for years the main broadcast record of the local music scene — interviews, stage-show coverage and the news of the business. Its archive is a significant, and largely uncatalogued, documentary source for the dancehall era.

person · Well supportedAnthony Miller

The presenter of Entertainment Report on TVJ, the programme that has covered Jamaican music on national television since 1990. His interviews and the show's archive amount to one of the most complete visual records of dancehall's last three decades.

publication · Well supportedOnStage TV

Jamaican entertainment interview television/digital platform associated with long-form reggae and dancehall interviews.

person · Well supportedWinford Williams

The host of OnStage, the long-running TVJ entertainment interview programme, and one of the most consistent interviewers the dancehall has. A generation of career announcements, clash post-mortems and first responses to controversy happened in his chair, which makes the OnStage archive a primary source.

publication · ProbableTVJ Intense

Television Jamaica's youth and entertainment interview strand, a broadcast platform for dancehall and culture conversation. The title is verified as a TVJ property; launch year and current host roster await a primary TVJ source before this record states them.

publication · Well supportedIRIE FM

Radio station launched in 1990 in Ocho Rios, the first Jamaican station to programme reggae around the clock — the island's own music as the format rather than the exception. Long-running programmes such as Mutabaruka's Cutting Edge turned its airtime into a running public archive of the culture.

person · Well supportedElise Kelly

One of Jamaican radio's most familiar voices, an IRIE FM anchor for decades whose easy-going daytime programme made her a national institution. Her longevity on an all-reggae station gives her a rare vantage: she has played each era of the music to the audience that lived it.

person · Well supportedMutabaruka as radio host

The dub poet as broadcaster: Mutabaruka's Cutting Edge on Irie FM, running since the early 1990s, made late-night radio a seminar on music, Rastafari, history and politics, argued in Jamaican speech. For many listeners it is the most sustained public-affairs voice the culture has had.

person · Well supportedNikki Z

Nikki Z (Nicole Duhaney) is a Connecticut-born broadcaster from a Jamaican family who became the first woman to host a Caribbean show on a commercial urban station in Connecticut (Jamz 910), then relocated to Jamaica and built 'Nikki Z Live' into a globally syndicated dancehall radio programme (The Bridge 99 FM, with US syndication) — a two-decade veteran whose interviews are a fixture of the artist press run.

business · Well supportedIrish and Chin

Irish and Chin is the New York-based sound-system promotion company led by Garfield 'Chin' Bourne with his partner Irish, best known for creating World Clash in New York in 1998 — the 'Super Bowl of sound clash', whose first title went to Sound Trooper's Ricky Trooper — alongside the U.S. Rumble series. Over two decades it staged clashes across North America, the Caribbean, Europe and Asia, helped carry Japan's Mighty Crown to international fame, and retired the World Clash brand with a 2022 finale in England.