City Sounds - Glacis in Concert, Luxembourg-City, Luxembourg10th August 2021
Open-Air “City Sounds” - Gentleman
Tillmann Otto, better known by his stage name GENTLEMAN, is a German Reggae musician. He has been travelling to Jamaica regularly since he was 18 years old. After beginning his career as a DJ, he based his style to the classic form of the Reggae genre like that of Bob Marley. He sings mainly in English or Jamaican Patois.
With songs like ‘Send a Prayer’, GENTLEMAN expresses his deep belief in God, without referring to a particular religion. His album, ‘Confidence’, climbed to number 1 on the German album charts in 2004. After years of singing in English, GENTLEMAN tried something new for his latest release in 2020.
Singing in German, stepping out of one’s own musical comfort zone and marking a completely new territory - for Germany’s first and still only Reggae-Ambassador, it is probably the ultimate challenge at this point in his career. Because for a Conscious Brother like him, who has been speaking mucho patois for decades, German is really “ein ganz anderer Schnack”, to take his own words out of his mouth. All the more astonishing, then, the striking naturalness, the weightlessness with which he manages the linguistic switchover - while retaining his characteristic timbre, his ad libs and all the neologisms of his Jamaica-hyperlinked lingo.
All pictures by Elena Arens
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