Burning Spear - Burning Spear: Marcus Garvey/Garvey's Ghost
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Free Music Notes for Burning Spear: Marcus Garvey/Garvey's Ghost
Free Music Review: one of the finest reggae albums available!
Hit: 5 Stars
a must have for anyone even mildly interested in reggae.
a stone cold classic!
get it!!
Free Music Review: # 1 roots classic album of all time
Hit: 5 Stars
This CD tops my list of the top roots albums of all time. To my list I add
Twinkle Brothers "Rasta Pon ToP"
Isreal Vibration "Forever"
Culture's "Two Sevens Clash" & "Wings of a Dove"
Yabba You
and of course
The Gladiators "Dreadlocks The Time Has Come"
Free Music Review: Do You Remember??
Hit: 5 Stars
I traded my vinyl copies of these 2 albums in around 1989 when this CD was first offered. This is a series of true milestones in roots reggae! It doesn't get any more pure and perfect than this. A MUST HAVE.Free Music Review: The Conquering Lion....
Hit: 5 Stars
A friend turned me onto this and from that day I was hooked!!! The '70s were really the birth of modern reggae, which came out of R&B, Rock Steady, and Ska. Coming out of the same neighborhodd in Kingston as Marley and Macin(Tosh), Winston Rodney, The Burning Spear, had the same class sensiblities and realization of the power of Rastafarianism and the struggles of the downtrodden in Jamaica and elsewhere. The sounds has really changed over the years and this is where it started. A must have for any real reggae fan. Slavery days says it all....Free Music Review: Buy this album right now
Hit: 4 Stars
"Marcus Garvey" is one of the classic albums of the 1970s from Jamaica. In an era which was full of quality releases from such luminaries as Bob Marley, Peter Tosh and Lee Perry, Burning Spear was more than capable of holding their own. As a reggae album, this is an essential purchase.There are a series of misconceptions about Burning Spear and the "Marcus Garvey" album, though. The first is that this is the debut album by the band - it isn't. Spear had released two albums prior to this one, however they hadn't done particularly well. Another misconception is that Burning Spear is a solo act - well, not at the time of this recording. Winston Rodney (one of the vocalists) would eventually go solo under the name Burning Spear, but at this point there were three vocalists. The final major misconception is that this album will sound remotely like Bob Marley's output from a similar time - very untrue.
Where Marley's recordings veer towards a more "pop" sensibility, Burning Spear is pure reggae. The music is skeletal and the vocals may not be as pure as the listener might expect, but they are nonetheless outstanding. Winston Rodney himself is often described as simply "chanting", which he does to great effect as his bandmates create a hypnotic sound.
The first 10 tracks constitute the original release of "Marcus Garvey". Every single one of these is a gem, from the title track with its opening line "No one remember old Marcus Garvey" right through to Rodney's repeated question "Where will I find my resting place?" at the end of "Resting Place". Particular highlights are the devotional fervour of "Days of Slavery" and the rock-solid groove of "Jordan River".
The second 10 tracks are the dub versions of the originals. Here, some history is relevant to understanding the recording. Dub is essentially instrumental reggae with added effects - sound switching between stereo channels, random drop-outs of particular instruments, scraps of vocals appearing at odd moments and so on. By the time "Marcus Garvey" was released, it had become customary in the Jamaican market to release a dub companion to the album in question. What ended up happening with "Marcus Garvey" was that dubs were created - on an album called "Garvey's Ghost" - for an English release. The producers decided that the dark, bass-heavy sound of Jamaican dub was not suitable for English ears and so toned down the overtly Jamaican influences. Every review I have been able to find of the original album of "Garvey's Ghost" describes these dubs as terrible. Appended to "Marcus Garvey", however, they seem quite competently done. They aren't up to the standards of dub legends like Lee Perry, Augustus Pablo or King Tubby, but they are uniformly solid and some ("Black Wadada", for example) actually do provide a new perspective on the song. I am as yet unsure whether these are a new set of dubs, the remasters of the original "Ghost" dubs or simply the dubs as released on "Ghost", but there doesn't appear to be that much to have complained about in the first place.
So, for such a strong album, why only 4 stars? The major reason is that fans of Bob Marley will probably find this album very hard to get into - at least to begin with. Spear, in either group or solo mode, is not the most accessible of artists but one who should be attempted at least. The second reason is that not all listeners will want the "Garvey's Ghost" part of the CD - while the second 10 tracks support their originals admirably, it is rather a tough ask for the reggae neophyte to listen to both albums.