by Noel Mengel
HOTTEST 'Pod pick of the past 12 months: a song called
Welcome to Jamrock. Go and find it right now if you
haven't heard it and you will see what all the fuss is about.
Right from the opening cry: "Out in the street, they
call it mur-der!", it
grabs the attention and won't let it go.
What makes the song stand out so strongly in 2006 is that
this is deep, dub-heavy reggae, sitting atop a speaker-shredding bass line,
with heavy echo on the "one-drop" rhythm that's at the heart of
Jamaican music.
It features an urgent delivery as the vocalist sums up the
political situation on the dangerous streets of Kingston:
"A ghetto education's basic/and most of dem
youths waste it/and when dem waste it/That's when dem take the guns to
replace it."
It's the kind of thing that might have come from great
reggae bands like Black Uhuru 20 years ago. What's
more, this tough, gritty slice of realism has broken through to wider success
outside the niche reggae market, even in the United
States, where mainstream acceptance for such
music is hard to find. The song won the best urban/alternative performance at
this year's Grammys. The album of the same name won
best reggae album. The performer has blazed a path across Europe
and then the UK
in the past month, winning the kind of breathless reviews which indicate that
this is the rise of an artist of rare talent.
What's more, he wears his name with pride, because this
rising star is Damian Marley.
Everyone knows that the weight of expectation is often a
crushing force for the offspring of musical legends.
Yet the youngest child of Bob Marley, thanks to his own
original gifts, his wide musical interests and the nurturing of his large
family of Marley music-makers – his step-brother Stephen is co-producer and an
integral collaborator – seems to rise serenely above it all.
Welcome to Jamrock is the most
exciting new reggae song in years, and while the album has several classic
reggae cuts – We're Gonna Make It is original
Wailers-style sound at its most irresistible – the album itself isn't strictly
reggae.
It takes in everything from hip-hop beats to electro-funk,
reggae and soul music, with an equally wide-ranging list of guests including
rapper Nas, Black Thought of The Roots, reggae man
Eek-A-Mouse and R&B bad boy Bobby Brown.
Take a listen to the playful The Master Has Come Back, where
old-school, dub-style vocal meets studio-crafted samples, to see how the spirit
of reggae can find a way forward in a new century.
The album is packed with all kinds of hooks which might
attract new listeners to reggae – just as Bob Marley's first album for release
in the West, Catch a Fire, did in 1972.
And this is the real Damian Marley. It's the music he wants
to make rather than what he thinks people want to hear.
"With each record we learn," he says, talking from
Tokyo on the eve of his first
Australian tour. "We have that experience to draw from, what we thought
could have been done better. But I couldn't say I directly had a plan or an
agenda or anything like that. At the end of the day it's wherever the energy
and the vibrations took us. It's instinctive, not premeditated."
He has been able to carry on his father's vision of taking
Jamaican music to the West with Welcome to Jamrock.
"True that, mon," he
says in his distinctive Jamaican patois. "Very proud of
that achievement.
"It has opened things up for the music, our original
music, as opposed to trying to make music to fit a radio format."
Damian is the youngest son of Bob and was just two when his
father died in 1981. He was raised in Jamaica
by his step-father and mother Cindy Breakspeare, a
one-time Miss World.
In the family home he heard all kinds of music, from reggae
to soul, jazz and Latin and African, and Snoop Dogg
opened his ears to hip-hop. He was also assisted by Marley's other sons
including Ziggy, Julian, Stephen and Ky-Mani, all music-makers, and was playing in his first
band at 13.
Damian also picked up the nickname Junior Gong, a reference
to his father's Tuff Gong nickname. Unlike his father, Damian had a privileged
upbringing and education, but started to win notice with his second album,
2001's Halfway Tree.
"Halfway Tree is a place in Jamaica
where the uptown, the more privileged areas, meets the downtown, the slum
areas," Damian explains. "It's the mid-point between the two. That's
a metaphor for myself, because my mom is from the
uptown and my father from downtown. Of course what we're trying to do through
the music is to unite everyone."
Certainly, the tell-it-like-it-is protest against gun
violence of the song Welcome to Jamrock united the
music-lovers of Jamaica,
if not the editorial writers.
But the truth is that many Jamaican people live with poverty
and violence every day. "The song sparked a little controversy with
certain newspapers, people complaining about the image that we are trying to
paint," Damian says. "But that was a very small number of people who
felt that way. The majority agree with what I'm saying about the situation in Jamaica."
A similar political edge delivers the thrust for
Confrontation, but that gives way to There For You, as
sweet and soulful as anything by Bob Marley.
The album is released on the Tuff Gong label, the imprint
founded by his father. Damian has never shied away from the legacy of his
father, as a musician and a revered figure. By all reports Damian plays
brilliant cover versions of Marley Sr songs,
including Could You Be Loved.
Move! on Welcome to Jamrock is a cross-generational co-write by Bob, Stephen
and Damian based on Bob's Exodus. Damian, who shares his father's flowing
dreadlocks and rastafarian
beliefs, now divides his time between homes in Jamaica
and Miami. There are much bigger
pressures in life than being Bob Marley's child, he says.
"I am a Marley and that will never change, it wouldn't
do me any good to run away from it. Our father was a rasta, we are rastas.
"The message that rastafari
has for people is unity and love. Not a superficial kind of love, but one where
there's mutual respect for other human beings and for life.
"The example from our father was that his music was
always something more important than just music to dance to. It's
mission, you know?"
Welcome to Jamrock is out now on
Tuff Gong through Universal. Marley plays the East Coast Blues and Roots
Festival, Byron Bay,
Saturday and Sunday, from 10.30pm
both nights
PROUD . . . Damian Marley is continuing the tradition of
taking Jamaican music to the West.
Posted: 6/13/06
Source: thecouriermail.news.com
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