Peter Anthony Morgan, the lead singer of the reggae group Morgan Heritage, a Grammy Award-winning group that was fashioned by the sons of singer Denroy Morgan and was recognized for its different influences and tight vocal harmonies, died on Sunday.
He was 46, the Related Press reported. Mr Morgan's household confirmed his loss of life in a press release on the band's social media platforms. The assertion didn’t point out his age or present a reason behind loss of life.
Mr. Morgan, referred to as “Peetah”, began Morgan Heritage with seven of his brothers in 1994. The band later turned a quintet.
For some early albums, together with “Shield Us Jah” (1997) and “Don't Haffi Dread” (1999), Morgan Heritage labored with Bobby Digital, one in every of Jamaica's most influential producers. Earlier than a present at New York Metropolis's Irving Plaza in 1999, a New York Occasions music critic wrote that the band “stays within the Nineteen Seventies reggae traditions of concord singing and messages assume”.
However Morgan Heritage was greater than a throwback to an previous period of reggae. AllMusic.com described their sound as a mix of “parts of roots reggae, lovers rock, soul, R&B, calypso, gospel, dub, and sometimes funk and dancehall.”
A number of Morgan Heritage albums have had depth on Billboard's reggae charts. One in all them, “Strictly Roots” received the most effective reggae album of the yr on the Grammy Awards 2015. The band's album “Avrakedabra” was up for a similar award two years later, however misplaced to “Stony Hill ” by Damian Marley, a son of Bob Marley.
Details about Mr. Morgan's survivors was not instantly accessible. His household's assertion described him as a husband, father, son and brother.
Peter Anthony Morgan was one in every of greater than two dozen kids of Denroy Morgan, a reggae star who was born in Jamaica and died in 2022. Peter Morgan and a few of his siblings had been educated in Springfield, Mass., the place his grandmother lived, Hartford. The Courant newspaper reported in 1999. His father was residing in New York at the moment.
“We went to high school in the course of the week, then on Friday night time we'd come to New York and rehearse with my dad all weekend, we'd be again on Monday in time for varsity,” mentioned Peter Morgan's brother Mojo to the Courant.
Morgan Heritage started touring within the early Nineties and launched their first album, “Miracle,” on MCA Data in 1994, in response to VP Data, a reggae label that launched lots of the others. album of the band.
His final album, “The Homeland”, launched in 2023, highlighted the African roots of reggae and featured collaborations with musicians from Jamaica and Africa. The mission occurred after the band did a present in Kenya in 2015 and began spending time there and in Ghana, and realized that Jamaica was related to Africa, Peter Morgan instructed Kaboom Journal. He mentioned he hoped the album, delayed by the pandemic, would burnish the band's legacy.
“The physique of labor, the catalog — you need to be remembered as a number of the finest music that's ever been created over time,” he mentioned, including that he hoped the music would “encourage generations to return.”
