In this episode, we bring you…the woman known as the “Mother Theresa of Reggae!
Sister Mary Ignatius, a white Jamaican Catholic nun dedicated her life to the Alpha Boys’ School in Kingston, where she taught football, cricket, boxing, table tennis and dominoes – but most importantly, music. A lover of jazz and blues, she inspired hundreds of “wayward boys” to become professional musicians, including future Skatalites Tommy McCook and Don Drummond, trombonist Rico Rodriguez and the conductor Leslie Thompson. Without Sister Mary Ignatius, who died at the age of 81 in 2003, we might never have had reggae.
DLS co-founder Katy Derbyshire tells the story of the woman known to her young charges as “Sister Iggy.” And she joins host/producer Susan Stone to introduce this episode, the first of Season Seven of the Dead Ladies Show Podcast, and to wish you all a happy International Women’s Day on March 8th!
Also available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, RadioPublic, Pocket Casts, Stitcher, Google Podcasts, and Acast.
And you can download our transcript, prepared by Susan Stone, here.
If you’re in New York by any chance, put Tuesday, March 19 in your diary for Dead Ladies Show NYC. More details here!
Show notes:
You can buy Goodison’s poetry collection Mother Muse, which contains the poem “The Near Noonday Dance of Sister Iggy”.
Or find out more from one of these two excellent sources: Heather Augustyn’s Alpha Boys’ School or Lloyd Bradley’s Bass Culture: When Reggae Was King.
View the catalogue of Sister Ignatius’s record collection online at the Seattle Museum of Pop Culture.
And lastly, you’d be foolish not to listen to Alpha Boys’ School Radio!
Our theme music is “Little Lily Swing” by Tri-Tachyon.
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