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The Ottawa Citizen The real stuffJunior Smith keeps Ottawa's black community plugged in with the longest-running reggae show on Canadian radio by Hal Doran Junior Smith has interviewed more than 100 reggae performers, including Bob Marley. Tune in to CKCU-FM's popular Reggae in the Fields program Saturday afternoon, and you'll not only hear the sounds of Bob Marley, you'll also hear the voice of the man behind this weekend's 16th annual Bob Marley Reggae Festival. For Junior Smith, the music of Marley, Peter Tosh and other reggae legends are "the real stuff." And for 20 years, Smith has been offering their music to local listeners in the longest-running reggae show on Canadian radio. He also offers updates from dozens of Caribbean countries, radio dramas, and news from and for the 30,000-member black community in the Ottawa area. Smith has interviewed more than 100 reggae performers for his program over the years, including Marley in 1979. Smith founded the mini-festival in 1981, the year Marley died, "to help keep alive his memory." Serving as artistic director, general manager, publicist and general gopher for the event ("though I get a lot of help from volunteers on the day of the festival"), Smith absorbs any financial losses himself; any profits are kept as seed money for the following year's party. For its first 10 years, the festival featured local bands; since then the Civic Centre party has branched out to include reggae groups from Toronto and Montreal. This year's headliners are Tactix from Toronto. Though he is dedicated to the sounds of reggae, Smith has been spending more on-air time looking at local issues. "Artists come and go," he notes, "but the issues stay here." Reggae in the Fields has increasingly become a sounding board for issues in the black community, such as education or police incidents involving blacks; Regional Police Chief Brian Ford has been the guest on more than one occasion on that topic. Reggae in the Fields is not only one of the longest-running programs on CKCU, but on all Canadian community radio. Smith, host and producer, began the program in the spring of 1977 while still a student at Carleton University, three years after he immigrated to Canada from Jamaica. He now works as a statistician for the federal government. The show's production is a family affair. Smith's wife, Lorraine ("LJ" to listeners), co-hosts with him every second week. Their four children (Natasha, 5; Robert, 7; Nicholas, 10; and Jason, 15) are also regulars at CKCU Saturday afternoons, playing quietly in an adjoining studio or watching their parents while they're on-air, reggae blasting from the speakers in the cramped studio. In addition to his family, Smith says it's the listeners who sustain him. He credits "respect for the people and respect for their opinions" as the main motivating force that has helped him devote at least eight hours a week of unpaid labour to the show for the past two decades. "It's not what Junior wants or thinks is important," he emphasizes. "What (the listeners) ask me to do, I try to provide it for them." Reprinted from the Ottawa Citizen. Copyright © 1997 The Southam News. |
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