Mystic Bowie honours Miss Beryl with Mother’s Day single Mother’s Love

Reggae singer Mystic Bowie says his mother drilled into him the value of sticking with a task long before she died close to two decades ago.

“The main life lesson that my mama taught me was, ‘You will never learn to walk if you are afraid to fall, and the longer you stay down when you fall, it’s harder to get up.’ ”

He told the Jamaica Observer that insights like that sit at the heart of why he put out Mother’s Love.

“It is a deeply personal tribute that honours the strength, sacrifice, and unconditional care of mothers,” he said in the interview.

He said the cut grew out of what he has lived through, above all the constancy his own mother showed.

“Mother’s Love was inspired by the devotion, nurture, and hard work that mothers give to their children, even when the father is not around. My mother was that example and, in many cases, men have had to play that role too,” he said.

He underlined what he wants listeners to hear.

“Never take a mother’s job lightly. A good mother will always have your back,” he said, adding that the record maps his own path without leaving anything out.

Because much of his audience sits outside Jamaica, he also shaped the sound to travel.

“I wanted to give the song a global flavour and dynamic, because most of my fans are not Jamaicans,” he said, and he voiced satisfaction with how the recording turned out.

This year’s Mother’s Day lands hard for him.

“It’s very personal. With the absence of a father, my mother had to play both roles,” he said. Alongside her, another woman who mothered him left a mark through firm rules and blunt honesty, he added.

Looking back at his work, he labelled the arc “steady and successful,” pointing to holding himself in check, carrying himself with dignity, and moving in circles that fit his aims. Turning points, he said, involved channelling private pain into songs and leaning on imagination when life closed in.

His mother was Beryl Smith, called Miss Beryl, a Maroon from Lacovia in St Elizabeth. Breast cancer took her in 2007 when she was 67.

“The relationship was bittersweet, because she sometimes take out her anger for my father’s disappearance on me, by saying hurtful things. However, I never hold it against her, because she was trying her best as a single mother, and I was just being a rough, curious, high-energy boy,” he recalled.