Two Sad Goodbyes and One Happy Welcome

Last week was a sad week in the world music community. We said goodbye to two world music legends - Ronnie Drew and Johnny "Dizzy" Moore. Ronnie Drew was the founding member of the highly influential Irish folk band The Dubliners. He was best-known as a guitar virtuoso, and was always open to fun genre-bending experiments - he even recorded with Celtic punk bands like the Pogues and the Dropkick Murphys in recent years. He was 73 years old.

Dizzy Moore was one of the founding members of ska legends the Skatalites. As a trumpeter, he pioneered the use of brass instruments in Jamaican music, making a horn section a must-have component of a ska band. Moore was also a virtuoso, and he learned to play his instrument in Alpha, a sort of juvenile detention center in Kingston. Interestingly, he was a very well-behaved child until he met another young musician who told him that he had gained his musical training in Alpha. Wanting to learn how to play, Moore began acting out and misbehaving with the sole intention of being sent to Alpha. It worked! Dizzy Moore passed away at the age of 70.

On a happier note, former No Doubt lead singer Gwen Stefani and her husband, rocker Gavin Rossdale, welcomed their second child, Zuma Nesta Rock Rossdale. I'm not sure where the name "Zuma" comes from (Zuma Beach, maybe?), but I can say with relative certainty that "Nesta" comes from Bob Marley, whose full name was Robert Nesta Marley. Zuma's big brother is named Kingston, which happens to be Bob Marley's birthplace. Do I sense a theme? At any rate, I wish the Stefani-Rossdale family all the happiness in the world.