August 11 is the date. Tiger Bay is the venue ¿ and, after an absence of one year, the legendary Byron Lee will be back with The Dragonaires for the fifteenth concert the band has given here. No doubt the faithful, who have been crowding his shows from the beginning, will be out in force, along with new fans ¿ a prospect Mr. Lee is clearly delighted to anticipate, for he not only loves the Island and Bermuda audiences, but also considers Tiger Bay "the pearl of venues" because of its good security and sound system, no drugs, no aerosol can fires, and no fights.

As always, the formula will be sets of "across the board music with all the hits", played from 9 p.m. to 3 a.m.

Joining the visiting artists on the programme will be the popular Bermuda reggae band, Home Grown.

So where has the Jamaican legend been since his last visit in 2005? Recovering from bladder cancer, which he considers a battle won, leaving him to continue controlling his diabetes, which he describes as an illness for life.

"It's all about good management," Mr. Lee says cheerfully. "You have to be disciplined and adhere to a strict diet, which is difficult because I travel so much."

Sadly, poor management of his diabetes is why Mr. Lee's beloved Jamaican bass player, Courtney Robb, will be missing from this year's line-up.

"Courtney was the best player I ever had, and he was with me for 30 years. He also did all the commercials, but due to renal failure he can't make it. It breaks my heart and his, because music is his life."

Because of his diabetes, the veteran artist and his band have decided to give a special performance at the Fairmont Southampton Princess Resort on August 10, the proceeds of which will be donated to the Bermuda Diabetes Association. Mr. Lee is waiving his fee for the occasion, as is promoter Eddy DeMello. Gene Steede will be the emcee.

Regarding his bout with cancer, Mr. Lee says he made a conscious decision to go public with it, not only because of what he calls "a worldwide stigma" attached to the disease, but also because of the high incidence of unnecessary deaths among Caribbean males.

"Jamaican men have a higher rate of prostate cancer because Caribbean men don't want to have the annual digital rectal examination, and they fear that if they have the disease they will be impotent so they are in self-denial and go into a closet and hide their situation."

For this reason, Mr. Lee accepted invitations to discuss his illness on radio and television, leading to "a media frenzy".

"I am not afraid to say I am a cancer survivor because it is nothing to be ashamed of," he says. "Going public takes away the worry people have about telling their families. Prostate is the easiest cancer to control."

Mr. Lee was on a tour of California, Britain and Germany when he first noticed his symptoms in Los Angeles, but he ignored them because he was "so busy". One doctor told him they were stress-related. By the time he got to London, however, the symptoms had worsened, so he flew home to Jamaica where the bladder tumour was discovered.

"If I had gone to the doctor six months' earlier it would have been a polyp," he notes. "Bladder cancer is rare but very aggressive, and because it is so rare in Jamaica the doctors were unfamiliar with how to treat it."

Certainly Mr. Lee was not happy with their proposed procedure to remove the bladder, following which he would have to wear an external bag for life. So he did some research, and when he learned of a new technique being done in Miami, where part of the patient's intestine is used to reconstruct a new bladder, he did not hesitate. Although his recovery from the surgery was remarkably quick, he continued to endure a grueling regime of chemotherapy which, thankfully, is now over.

"I am glad to be alive, and I want to use my recovery to help educate others," he says. "I have done radio and TV shows about it, and also have a programme about it coming up in Miami."

If ever there was living proof of the adage, 'You can't keep a good man down', it is Byron Lee. Despite his 72 years, and his health issues, the veteran entertainer is back on form and rarin' to go.

"We have been in the business for 50 years, and we are the oldest band. Only the Rolling Stones have been around as long as us, and they came three years after we started," he says.

The group that became Byron Lee and The Dragonaires started out as schoolboys on the same football team at St. George's College in Jamaica, where Mr. Lee was a top scorer. The team won so many trophies that they celebrated in the dressing room. Mr. Lee decided to include some entertainment, so he bought an antique guitar and taught himself to play. Fellow team mates Carl Brady, Ronnie Nasralla, Alty East and Ronald Peralto, used a door, a box for a drum, spoons, and a grater for percussion, and harmonised.

They brief, first gig was during a dance at the school in 1956, and in 1957 the band officially formed as Byron Lee and The Dragonaires.

It was while they were playing in a Jamaican night spot that they were approached by the makers of the James Bond film, 'Dr. No', much of which was shot in Jamaica, and the rest is history.

"At that time the producers didn't know the film was going to be such a big success. It was a pilot on a shoe string budget. The musical director, Monty Norman, said he liked our music and wanted me to do a calypso theme for the film. The result was 'Jamaica Jump-Up,' and I played bass. My singer and band played 'Three Blind Mice'at another point in the film. Bond made us realise that the time had come to turn professional. Until then, we held regular jobs and music was a sideline.

During the 50 years that Mr. Lee and the Dragonaires have been performing, they have established many major milestones too numerous to mention here ¿ of which they are justifiably proud.

"We promoted Jamaican music abroad, and were the first to introduce ska to New York," Mr. Lee says. "Mine is the only band that has been through five music evolutions: ska, rock steady, reggae, dance hall, and now the cross-fertilisation of dance hall and hip-hop. We are a party band that plays all the hits."

He has been interviewed by Mike Wallace on '60 Minutes' about Ray Charles, has made many recordings, and is the recipient of 120 awards.

He has been honoured twice by the Government of Jamaica, who gave him the Order of Distinction ¿ an honour shared by Marley ¿ as well as the Silver Musgrave Medal for his promotion of Caribbean music, as did UNICEF for the same reason.

Like many professional musicians who have been in the business for a long time, Mr. Lee is not impressed with the trend of today's music, or the way it is constructed.

"The sweet music has been pushed into the background. What Marley left us has now been replaced by dance hall, which is music for the young people. The sweet music of the soca has been replaced by hard core soca," he begins. "Today's music doesn't have a shelf life. If you go back to the era of the Beatles, Elvis and the like you can still find those CDs, but the bands of today are here today and gone tomorrow."

Citing his biggest hit, 'Tiny Winy', as an example of enduring music, Mr. Lee says it was written 15 years ago, but is still regarded today as "the national anthem of soca".

In terms of songwriters, Mr. Lee says people cannot recall today's hits because of the way they are constructed. Lyrics are not being written first, and the music is mostly electronic, using samplers and drum machines.

"In the olden days we would write the lyrics first and then decide what rhythm we wanted go to with them. The formula was: lyrics, rhythm, beat. Now it is producers ¿ who aren't really producers but promoters ¿ who say to the computer expert, 'Put a rhythm down and a beat and we'll write the lyrics afterwards', which is not compatible. You have to have the lyrics in your head first. As a musician it is hard to understand it because what you get is so repetitive. Soca today is all repetitive rhythm. It has lost the horns, the backing voices, and the sweet rhythms."

Small wonder then, that Mr. Lee has chosen to celebrate The Dragonaires' golden jubilee with a special, three-CD commemorative collection labelled 'Music That Memories Are Made Of', on each of which 20 of his favourites are compartmentalised as 'Original Soca Songs', 'Soflee Songs' and 'Vintage Songs.'

Mr. Lee will bring out a 50th anniversary tribute DVD at Christmastime featuring reggae and soca artists from Barbados, Trinidad and Tobago, Montserrat and Jamaica. These include The Merrymen, The Mighty Sparrow, Arrow, Pluto, Ernie Smith, Keith Lynn, Admiral Bailey and Marcia Griffiths.

When the thatch is silver and there is a half-century of experience under the belt, the question inevitably arises: When will Byron Lee retire? Mike Wallace asked the question, and the answer hasn't changed.

"Retire from what?" is the response. "That says it all. Music is my life. There is no life without music. Before the doctors operated on me in Miami, it was 50/50. I realised it was one-on-one with God. All the money, connections and material things meant nothing. I had my family outside praying on their knees and the surgeon saying, 'It's in the hands of God'. So I talked to God and asked him to give me five more years to complete my music, and said, 'If you don't, who is going to play 'Tiny Winy' on the bandstand?'"

Mr. Lee's prayer were answered. Four weeks later he was back on the bandstand, to the astonishment of the doctors, and he has never looked back.

"Music is like a vitamin. For me not to come back to Bermuda would put me back in bed. Of all the islands I have been to I love Bermuda the most. I love to play for Bermudians because we are not a show band. You are not going to a show but an event. On the bandstand we transmit our feelings of excitement to the crowd and we get it back. The power of the music is such that the crowd becomes uninhibited. When I see that happening my job is complete."

• Tickets for 'Byron Lee's Summer Fest' at Tiger Bay on August 11 are $50 per person for groups of ten, $55 for advance purchases, and $60 at the door. They are now available at The Music Box, Music World, Only the Best, St. George's; Somerset Laundromat; Sound Stage, Washington Mall; and Hillview Variety at Devil's Hole. Gates will open at 8 p.m. with show time from 9 p.m. to 3 a.m. Come early for the Tic-Toc competition.

• Tickets ($75) for the August 10 benefit concert at the Fairmont Southampton Princess Resort in aid of the Bermuda Diabetes Association are now available from The Music Box and the Diabetes Association. Dress is lounge suits, and show time is 8 p.m. Tickets are limited, so patrons are urged to buy early.