Smiley was born on the beautiful island of Aruba as Tavis Nedd in 1980. He has been making music since he was seventeen years old. He moved to The Netherlands in 2000, where he started touring with the popular Dutch reggaeband Out of Many for three years. After that Smiley formed his own band and as from 2004 Smiley performed at several Dutch festivals and venues in Holland such as UITmarkt, Reggae on the Beach, Pleasure Easter Party and Gospelfestival. Smiley has started a more international career since 2007 by performing in Germany for example the Popkomm Music Conference in Berlin, Club Yaam (Berlin) and Club Bahia (Aruba).
His first single “Tomorrow” had quite a lot of airplay on various radiostations in Holland, Aruba and Belgium and the musicvideo of this song reached a number three position in the reggaechart of Dutch musictelevision The Box in the first two weeks. From then on Smiley’s music has been played on radiostations in Aruba, Surinam, Germany, Belgium and some local radiostations in the United States. A collaboration between Smiley and Surinam band Ondrofeni resulted in a unique song called Wailing Home; a combination of reggae and the Surinam music-style Kawina. On September 2nd 2008 this song was released on a compilation-album called “I believe in Amsterdam”.
In 2008 Smiley travelled to Jamaica to work with great producers and musicians such as Barry `o Hare and Altafaan Records. As a result he recorded a song with Junior Kelly. The video of “Dem a Wonder” was released on YouTube on November 10th 2008 and it was aired by Reggae Entertainment Television and Tempo TV and was played on the biggest reggae radiostation of Jamaica for a while. The tune Distance was released on the “Tek ‘a’ Train” riddemselection by Rootdown Records on November 20th 2009. The video of this song was released a month later and has been broadcasted by different musictelevision stations as Tempo TV, TMF Pure, Xite and France26. In the first weeks the video reached number one in the Reggaefrance videocharts. The video has been in high rotation on TMF Pure for 7 weeks now and also the Dutch radiostations Kink fm, Rijnmond radio and Radio Brabant have played the song for 7 weeks straight.
Smiley’s first EP called Lively Road was released in May 2010. With 7 tracks and two videos this EP got a lot of attention. Lots of reggaeblogs and communities from several countries around the globe printed very positive reviews. The EP was also a trigger for big reggaefestivals in Germany such as Reggaejam and Ruhr Reggae Summer to book Smiley as an act. The title song Lively Road was also released on the Kokoo Riddim selection of Rootdown Records and hit the top40 charts of Curacao, reaching the top 10, alongside popular acts like Lady Gaga and Justin Bieber.
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See here more Smiley live at Reggae Jam (DE) 2010 videos
See here more Smiley live at Kwakoe Festival Amsterdam 2010 videos
See here more Smiley live at the “Lively Road” Release party in Amsterdam videos
