Featured Artist / Jahbeloved – Zion Awake
An artist with many sides, Jahbeloved pours a wealth of personal and observational experience into his work, combining melody and message to get audiences listening and moving.
Born in Ghana, he started out musically with SHIRRING SHIRING SHI, a band he founded on the University of Ghana campus with David Amon Forson, former singer with Kente Band now known as 7 who had just quit the group and 2 sisters rendering the backing vocals.
A self-taught bassist, Jahbeloved played the bass and sung consecutively as they put their fingerprints on the Accra reggae scene.
After 7 moved on, Jahbeloved tried it out with other “breddren and sistren” under different band names until seemingly disappearing from the scene.
During this time however, he worked behind the scenes in various capacities ranging from publishing the only ‘strictly reggae’ magazine called Ghana Reggae Information Digest (GRID), through working as sub-organizer for the AFRICA UNITE 2008 event and managing hip life superstar Lord Kenya to working as a pundit on several radio stations.
Jahbeloved left Ghana in 2010 to further media studies in Perth, Australia where he almost instantly became part of the musical scene on several fronts.
He played bass and sang backing vocals with Afro-fusion trio JENAKO while fronting as lead singer for reggae band THIRD WIND. He also mentored and worked with some young hip hop acts, engineers and DJs. He opened with hip hop group PANTHEON VANGUARD for DELA SOUL during this time.
He eventually left and settled in New York city where he says for the first time circumstances forced him to “go solo”.
Zion Awake is his first album and has 10 tracks with features from TURBULENCE, ANTHONY B, MESHA STEELE, KNII LANTE etc.
Zion Awake, the single and title track of the album is on SPOTIFY, APPLE MUSIC, AMAZON MUSIC,YOUTUBE and a list of other platforms.
Zion Awake, the Album is projected to be out this December.
