… and life is music. It is side by side of love the most important thing in my life. I often sit and actively listen to music, not just having it in the background. I reflect upon the lyrics, I cry, I smile, I jump up and down, I dance or I just relax and let the music take me places I never thought I would experience. I don´t drink or take any kind of drugs, nor do I have a TV, instead I get high on music, sometimes falling into trance-like states of mind. Even though I understand seven languages I enjoy music sung in languages I do not understand. Music in itself is a language, speaking not only to your mind but also most definitely to your heart, and it transcends all boundaries and borders. Music is freedom and in someway music and love is the same.
I remember almost everything I have listened to in my life. Every song brings out memories of significant and unsignificant moments in my life both in urban Sweden, living or passing through other countries, and in the mountains of Bosnia where I spent the summers shepherding with my grandparents from the age of five.
I got my first music cassette when I was three years old at the end of the seventies : James och Karin – Barnlåtar (which in Swedish means Children´s songs). I would describe it as psychadelic progressevie children´s singer/songwriter rock/pop. Now as an adult I wonder what stuff they must have taken to write this kind of music? There were songs about flying dogs biting children in the legs and swallowing the legs whole ; songs sung by a letter without a stamp that was lost; songs about animals demonstrating against roads being built through their forest, , songs sung by a toothbrush and so on …
When I was four my hippie mother came home from Morocco with a piece of music that would change my life and follow me through the next 30 years. It was the album Uprising by Bob Marley & The Wailers. Since then I have never stopped listening to Reggae. Whatever kind of music I have listened to through the years Reggae music has followed me patiently side by side with rock, pop, punk, heavy metal, blues, hip-hop, rap, drum n´ base, ska, salsa, reggaeton, bachata, dub, dubstep, zouglou, mbalax, so called world music and some stuff I really wouldn´t know how to categorize.
Lately I have been virtually travelling to most of the 55 countries of Africa by help of the music program Spotify. That program revolutionized my life as I all of a sudden have access to billions of songs from all over the world legally. You listen to one artist and the program suggests simliar artists to you. In that way I started in Gambia in western Africa and Zimbawe in eastern Africa with artists such as Youss N´Dour and Thomas Mapfumo and three months later I had several hundreds of songs from all over the continent that I really like. You just pick the best from each artist and put them in playlists available to you anywhere in the world where you have internet access. Before Spotify I had to go through strange music shops looking for Reggae that I never found or just finding one or two artists from outside of the so called western world. If you want to listen to some of my Spotify playlists go to the bottom of this post. (Spotify is available in Spain, UK, Finland, Norway, USA, France, Sweden and the Netherlands) Everytime you listen Spotify pays a small sum to the artist!
I´ll try to post when I find songs or music albums that moves me or from time to time write about great music that I have already stumbled upon. Also, whenever I hear a thoughtful piece of lyrics I will share it with you in a short post. The focus of this blog will be on Reggae from all countries in the world but i will also post some of my favorite pieces of music from the 56 countries of Africa. i will gladly accept any music suggestions of local reggae bands more or less famous.
As a start without introducing all musicians/groups at this time I´ll list some favorite musicians/bands. Instead of genre I will begin with a list from country to country in alphabetical order.
The following is a list of favorite artist/group and one or two of their songs that I can think of at the moment (I´ll add more later) :
http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLF9F44191DA5A49FB Please click if you would like to hear some of the songs below.
Songs/Artists in green are also clickable and will take you to that spesific song on youtube 
If you have any suggestions for more music, please let me know
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