LargeUp Premiere: Machel Montano + Tarrus Riley’s “Memory” Video

Words by Tishanna Williams
Photo by Jermaine Cruickshank

The music video for Caribbean mega-stars Machel Montano and Tarrus Riley’s 2016 track “Memory,” shot during this year’s Machel Monday concert in Port of Spain, Trinidad, is the directorial debut for Monk Monte team member Anthony Edwards. Edwards, who has previously worked in smaller capacities on Destra and Machel’s “Come Back to Me” and Machel and Major Lazer’s “Sound Bang” video, says that  the video was something of a conceptual sequel to the latter, which was directed by Aaron Richards who also served as co-editor on “Memory”.

“We did our very best to distill the hurricane that is Machel Monday and bottle it into a tiny music video as well as capture the passion of all the hardworking people without whom the show would not be possible,” Edwards says. “The black and white motif allows viewers to see the moving parts of Machel Monday as they are without the distraction of color. There is a kind of magic in that honesty and I am grateful to Machel for giving me and my team an opportunity to be a part of capturing that magic.”

Machel and his team have always had a knack for choosing the right musical marriages to create mass cultural appeal. Check him and Tarrus as they light up the stage, audiences and your screens with “Memory.” In a necessary last-second edition, the clip ends with a dedication to Tarrus’ late father, Jimmy Riley, who passed away this week at age 61.