Independent cultural imprint Minority Music last week released Hey Nanny!, a dancehall-reggaeton tribute celebrating Queen Nanny of the Maroons, Jamaica’s only national heroine and a global symbol of resistance and freedom.
Written under the pseudonym Garvey Cabral and co-produced with the assistance of artificial intelligence (AI), Hey Nanny! fuses folklore, patois idiom, and modern rhythm to recount the legend of the Maroon leader whose defiance safeguarded generations of free Jamaicans.
Written from the perspective of a diasporic son reconnecting with an ancestral story once absent from British schoolbooks, the track bridges heritage and contemporary sound.
Released through Minority Music, the song forms part of the label’s soon-to-be-launched Infinite Games series, the first in a new genre of “musical essays”, researched like dissertations and remixed with the help AI to transform written and oral history into rhythm, narrative, and reflection.
Hey Nanny! succinctly demonstrates the wittiness in Jamaican wordplay, the island’s sense of humour and reverence of history,” says a spokesperson for Minority Music. “We treat AI like a DJ’s turntable — a tool for sampling language, memory, and tone — so that history itself can be remixed into new consciousness.”
Hey Nanny! is available on all major streaming platforms from Friday, October 18, 2025.
