The locals call her Madussa, or Medusa. Clearly, 46-year-old Ari Up, the punk-reggae goddess of the recently reformed Slits, is still a mesmerizing presence — and not only because she sports a tangled blonde beehive of dreads.

Spending a few days in spring last year at Ari's then home in Kingston, Jamaica, with a seemingly never-ending entourage of her local extended family, my host was the life of the party and often one of the few non-Jamaicans at the raucous all-night sound systems that the island is famous for.

A typical day went like this: invite the kids over to jump about on an inflatable bouncy castle erected in her backyard; have a domestic drama with her 19-year-old boyfriend; dance and party (a lot) to the rawest music; attend a hillside sound-system session backdropped by the sound of gunshots, only to return to find our car had been taken for a joyride; and enjoy a beach-side barbecue attended by Ari's posse of Jamaican back-up dancers.