KINGSTON, Jamaica – Marcia Griffiths, whose enduring career earned her the Queen of Reggae title, has been awarded the Order of Jamaica, the country’s fourth-highest honor. The singer, who is one of five recipientsfor that award, will receive it on October 16, celebrated in Jamaica as National Heroes Day.
Marcia Griffith
“I’m so thankful that God has preserved me and I’m getting my flowers while I’m here. This is one of the greatest feelings for me,” Griffiths told South Florida Caribbean News from Germany.
She was previously awarded the Order of Distinction, Jamaica’s sixth-highest honor.
Griffiths‘ career started in the early 1960s as a teenager, performing at shows throughout Kingston with bands like Byron Lee and The Dragonaires. Later that decade, with singer/songwriter Bob Andy as a mentor, Griffiths had a string of hit songs for producer Clement “Coxson” Dodd at his Studio One label.
They included Feel Like Jumping, Mark my Word and Really Together (with Bob Andy). She had a massive hit in the United Kingdom with Andy during the early 1970s with a reggae rendition of Nina Simone’s Young, Gifted And Black.
For most of the 1970s, Griffiths recorded and toured as a member of The I Three, Bob Marley’s harmony trio, which also included his wife Rita and Judy Mowatt.
After Marley’s death in 1981, Griffiths scored a huge hit with Electric Boogie, which sparked a dance craze of the same name in the United States. She enjoyed a renaissance in the 1990s as part of producer Donovan Germain’s Penthouse Records alongside Beres Hammond, Buju Banton, Wayne Wonder and Cutty Ranks.
2023 Entertainment Industry Order of Distinction Winners
Seven members of Jamaica’s entertainment industry will receive the Order of Distinction. They are pioneer ska singer Owen Gray, Neville Garrick, who designed several of Marley’s album covers, Justine Henzell, founder/organizer of the Calabash Literary Festival, singers Tarrus Riley and Wayne Marshall, playwright/actor Lenford Salmon and Clive “DJ Kool” Herc, the Jamaica-born sound system maestro widely regarded as the father of hip hop.
