Kings Highway – AlpenPhunk 2022 – Live @ Crested Butte Public House

Inspired from the height of 1960s Jamaican jazz, folk and spiritual music, King’s Highway is an eight piece ensemble based in Boston, MA. King’s Highway is comprised of well traveled, internationally recognized musicians from diverse backgrounds. It includes past or present members of the following groups: The Skatalites, John Brown’s Body, Club d’Elf, Naya Rockers, Slightly Stoopid, The Slip, Itzhak Perlman, The Nth Power, and others. In a live setting King’s Highway takes the listener from Caribbean folk music to the more commercialized version known as calyspso, on to the spiritual foundation of nyabinghi drumming, and into ska.

As part of its mission to create greater awareness of the originators of this music, King’s Highway is a founding partner of March for Music Education (MME). Along with Lauryn Hill, The Marley Foundation, Easy Star Records, VP Records, Slightly Stoopid, and many others, King’s Highway helped to raise over $50,000 in 2019 to support ten student scholarships for The Alpha Institute in Kingston, Jamaica. Alpha’s legendary music program spawned the careers of many great Jamaican aritsts, and importantly remains a vibrant vocational institute in Kingston, providing job training and education to the youth of Kingston.The highly successful campaign was covered in Billboard Magazine, The Jamaica Observer, and other publications. In early 2020, King’s Highway and March for Music Education led an international exchange program with The Alpha Institute, teaching and playing in Kingston, JA, and hosting two students and a faculty member throughout New England (visits with Berklee College of Music, University of Rhode Island, Canton High School, and more).