Peter Anthony Morgan, the lead singer of the reggae band Morgan Heritage, a Grammy Award-winning group that was shaped by kids of the singer Denroy Morgan and got here to be identified for its diversified influences and tight vocal harmonies, died on Sunday.
He was 46, The Associated 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 for loss of life.
Mr. Morgan, often known as “Peetah,” began Morgan Heritage with seven of his siblings within the 1994. The band later turned a quintet.
For some early albums, together with “Protect Us Jah” (1997) and “Don’t Haffi Dread” (1999), Morgan Heritage labored with Bobby Digital, one in all Jamaica’s most influential producers. Before a present at New York City’s Irving Plaza in 1999, a New York Times music critic wrote that the band “holds on to the 1970s reggae traditions of harmony singing and thoughtful messages.”
But Morgan Heritage was greater than a throwback to an older period of reggae. AllMusic.com described its sound as a mix of “elements of roots reggae, lovers rock, soul, R&B, calypso, gospel, dub, and on occasion, funk and dancehall.”
Several Morgan Heritage albums had deep runs on the Billboard reggae charts. One of them, “Strictly Roots” received for finest reggae album of the 12 months on the 2015 Grammy Awards. The band’s album “Avrakedabra” was up for a similar award two years later, however misplaced out to “Stony Hill” by Damian Marley, a son of Bob Marley.
Information about Mr. Morgan’s survivors was not instantly obtainable. His household’s assertion described him as a husband, father, son and brother.
Peter Anthony Morgan was one in all 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 have been educated in Springfield, Mass., the place their grandmother lived, the Hartford Courant newspaper reported in 1999. Their father was dwelling in New York on the time.
“We’d go to school during the week, then on Friday night come to New York and rehearse with my father all weekend, come back up on Monday in time for school,” Peter Morgan’s brother Mojo advised the Courant.
Morgan Heritage started touring within the early Nineties and launched its first album, “Miracle,” on MCA Records in 1994, in keeping with VP Records, a reggae label that launched a number of of the band’s different albums.
Their newest album, “The Homeland,” launched in 2023, highlighted reggae’s African roots and featured collaborations with musicians from Jamaica and Africa. The challenge occurred after the band did a present in Kenya in 2015 and commenced spending time there and in Ghana, and realized how linked Jamaica remained to Africa, Peter Morgan advised Kaboom Magazine. He mentioned he hoped the album, delayed by the pandemic, would burnish the band’s legacy.
“The body of work, the catalog — you want to be remembered as some of the best music that ever was created throughout the years,” he mentioned, including he hoped the music would “inspire generations to come.”
