#392: Burning Spear - Marcus Garvey (1975)

Zack: Let me get this out of the way right now: I listened to albums 391-394 back-to-back-to-back-to-back while working on my prospectus, so the same disclaimer about not paying the most attention I gave for Tarkus applies here as well. That said, I liked Marcus Garvey enough to go back and relisten to all the songs I realized I had completely not paid attention to. Which means I basically ended up listening to this album 2.5 times by accident, and I have absolutely no qualms about that. Marcus Garvey is a reggae album and we haven’t had a chance to listen to one of them in a long, long time (I haven’t gone back and looked, but I think the last one was Peter Tosh’s Legalize it somewhere on the other side of 300). Marcus Garvey definitely had some political undertones to it which didn’t get through to me at all. All I noticed was the smooth grooves that kept telling me how nice it would be to be relaxing in a tropical paradise somewhere. And while I’m excited to double back to get more about the message, the feeling that the album had is pretty much all you can ask from a reggae album.

Favorite Tracks: Slavery Days; Tradition; Resting Place

Emily: Reggae music is deceptively simple - the steel drums and chill vibes evoke Jamaica's tropical climate, beautiful beaches, and laid-back party atmosphere. However, underneath these first impressions frequently lie revolutionary lyrics that reflect the political, economic, and social turmoil that took over the island after its independence and continues to some extent today. My favorite example of this is Jimmy Cliff's The Harder They Come (probably because I wrote a paper about the album and its accompanying film for a class in college), but Burning Spear's Marcus Garvey comes in a close second. The album cover itself indicates that it's not just a reggae party album, revealing the political and militant content right up front. A first listen reveals a classic upbeat reggae sound, right at home on the beach or in a dancehall. However, I need to listen to Marcus Garvey a few more times to fully grasp the entire context - something I definitely intend to do in the future.

Favorite Tracks: Marcus Garvey; Tradition; Old Marcus Garvey

#267: Peter Tosh - Legalize It (1976)

Emily: In my last semester of college, I took a politics in film class with my roommate. It met once a week, and half the time we just watched movies in class. So of course, it was awesome. One of the films we watched was The Harder They Come, the first major film to come out of Jamaica. It's a pretty good movie, but it has an even more awesome reggae soundtrack. The soundtrack is even credited with introducing reggae to American audiences a few years before Bob Marley. For the final project in this class, we had to do a creative project incorporating themes we had covered throughout the semester. I worked with my roommate, and we didn't really want to do much with the project (being in the last weeks of our last semester and all) so we decided to pick up on The Harder They Come and did a presentation about political themes in reggae music. It took about an hour to finish, the last slide had a picture of our rabbit with a Microsoft-Paint-drawn rasta hat, and we still managed to get an A. Again, an awesome class. Perhaps, though, if we had put more effort into our research we would have come across Peter Tosh. Legalize It would have been an interesting song to discuss the political implications of the marijuana trade in post-colonial Jamaica. Early reggae frequently seems to have underlying political themes, so it's a worthwhile exercise to explore with artists like Tosh, who used to play with Bob Marley. On a pure musical front, I didn't think this album was much different than the style of Marley and his peers. I tend to prefer the more upbeat and ska-twinged (but still political) reggae of the early '70s, like Jimmy Cliff (seriously, check out the The Harder They Come soundtrack). Even so, you don't get to apply your liberal arts education every day (well, I don't), so a reggae album lets me do that without even having to make a PowerPoint.
Favorite Tracks: Legalize It; Till Your Well Runs Dry; Burial

Zack: It occurred to us that we haven’t done a reggae album since Gerald Ford was in office, so here we are. The first place I ever heard of Peter Tosh was a VH1 documentary about drug culture that played Legalize It in the background for a scene that (if my memory is correct) was about the illegal importation of marijuana by plane from South America. That song was pretty much made for use in documentaries about drugs. The song should just be called Royalty Checks. With that song in mind, I wasn’t particularly surprised to see the cover art. And I certainly wasn’t surprised to hear the music, which sounded exactly like everyone expects a reggae album to sound like. I wouldn’t be surprised if every song on this album had, at one point or another, been attributed to Bob Marley by some white person who wanted to seem hip. Overall, Legalize It (the album) is a good reggae album worth checking out if that’s what you’re into. If you’re not a real reggae fan but just want to put on something relaxing for an hour, you’d be better off going with the real Bob Marley.

Favorite Tracks: Legalize It; Till Your Well Runs Dry; No Sympathy