“I wanted to show people that I can do music”: Usain Bolt as he releases a reggae album
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Usain Bolt and Nugent ‘NJ’ Walker
Having hung his boots, legendary sprinter Usain Bolt has started the third chapter of his life. And he aims to top the charts having failed to become a professional footballer, his first attempt at a career since he gave up athletics. The pandemic gave Bolt the opportunity to work on his album, one that has been in the making for some time.
“I’ve been talking about making an album for the past three years, then the pandemic started and I had a whole lot of time on my hands,” he told the Guardian. “Everyone knows me as a track athlete. And I wanted to show people that I can do music, too.”
Bolt opens up how he came to enjoy music growing up in Jamaica. “Obviously you hear Bob Marley everywhere in Jamaica,” he says. “Growing up, families would get together at what we called ‘round robins’ and listen to old-school Jamaican music like Beres Hammond and Bunny Wailer.“
“I’ve grown up on old-school reggae since I was eight or nine. Then, when I was a teenager, the Anger Management riddim took Jamaica by storm….I only started going to clubs when I moved to Kingston at 17, Jamaican people are always dancing, so we make specific music for dance: reggae and dancehall. When it comes on, it’s time to dance.”
“Cricket was my life,” Usain Bolt
It is surprising but athletics was not Usain Bolt’s first love, who won 134 of 146 races, including 11 World Championship gold medals, eight Olympic golds since 2008. The Jamaican sprinter shares that former Pakistan skipper Waqar Younis was his favourite before he switched to track and field.
“We were always playing football and cricket in the streets,” he says. “Cricket was my life, because that’s all my dad would watch. He was a massive West Indies fan, but I didn’t understand why I was supposed to support them just because I was from the West Indies, so I supported Pakistan. I was a massive fan of Waqar Younis.”
“He was a fast bowler and really good at bowling Yorkers. I was a fast bowler, too. One day, my cricket coach saw me and said: ‘Maybe you should try sprinting on the track as well.’ I did both for a while, but when I got to high school, I started focusing more on track and field because that was where my talent lay.”
Bolt is all set to captain team Jamaica at the Running World Cup. Usain Bolt has no plans of returning to the field competitively. However, he will make a brief comeback on the field for the Running World Cup 2021. Interestingly, it’s open for anyone around the world and started on the 21st of September and the finals will be held between 5th to 10th October 2021.
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Anshuman Mahapatra
(1496 Articles Published)