Mar 16, 2020
This week we take a historical journey with my guest and good friend Peter Ashbourne. He takes us from the beginning of the music scene in Jamaica to his studies at Berklee in Boston and his prolific career creating jingles, highlighting the technology of the day along the way. This is episode 5, a moment of Music Technology- A Jamaican Story.
Peter Ashbourne attended the St. Hugh’s Preparatory School, the Wolmer’s High School for Boys, the University of the West Indies in Kingston, the Jamaica School of Music, and has a Bachelor of Music (composition) degree from the Berklee College of Music (Boston, Mass., USA). Mr Ashbourne, who holds a LRSM (Performance) diploma in violin, was considered a child prodigy on that instrument from as early as age 9. He also plays the piano.
An experienced composer, arranger, performer and band leader, Ashbourne taught at the ‘Jamaica School of Music’ in its Jazz Department from 1976 – 1979. He conducted an Art Music and Reggae Workshop at the ‘University of Music and Dramatic Arts – Graz’, Austria in 1986 and held a lecture and seminar on the ‘Development of Jamaican Popular Music, from Mento, Ska, Reggae to Dancehall’ at the ‘University of Southern Maine’, U.S.A., in spring 2007. His lecture ‘Two Turning Points in Jamaican Popular Music’ held at the Global Reggae Conference 2008, at the University of the West Indies (UWI) was universally well received and was published in the Book ‘Global Reggae’ in 2013. In 2019 he was invited to present ‘An Overview of Jamaica’s Musical Landscape’ at the annual UWI ‘Philip Sherlock Lecture’.
For more information, please check out his website: