I really love this band! They’ve put out a total of four albums from 2002-2017 and “Strength to Survive” was released in 2012 and is my favourite of the group.

It’s all reggae, excellent and authentic reggae which seems like nothing worth mentioning except that SOJA is an 8 member band of 6 white guys and 2 mixed race guys based in Virginia.

Now, I’m American by choice and process but British by birth, Jamaican by nationality and English maternally and Scottish paternally; a true mutt and I embrace my muttness. I also embrace Peter Tosh, Jimmy Cliff and Bob Marley -- but SOJA, in my book, is on par with those icons of the genre.

There’s not a bad track in “Strength to Survive,” each having its own cultural relevance and appropriate message. The song “Nothing Ever Changes” is my favourite track of the album but in truth I love the whole collection; it makes me happy, takes me from home to another home and there’s no standing still once SOJA comes through my earbuds. Be glad you only have to read that and not see it.

I would be remiss if i failed to give a shout out to Jerry Afemata aka J BOOG (his stage name) whose reggae puts me back to that little island in the heat of mid-Summer with the aroma of meat being roasted on a wood fire at the beach, where every man is tilting his Red Stripe and every woman their coconut water infused with a little Wray&Nephew, for health purposes of course. Not bad reggae for a guy born in Long Beach, California of Samoan descent!

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