BURNING SPEAR / “Marcus Garvey” (Showcase Mix)

I am the one who is carrying the torch for reggae music at this time. Especially on an international level. It’s the people who gave I the torch, yunno. And the singer who was carrying the torch before me, it was the people who gave it to him...It’s not like I said that ‘I want to carry this torch,’ either. If I did I probably would not be carrying it. A lot of artists may misunderstand me when I say that I am The One in this time, especially on an international level. However, there is a lot of work that must be put in before anyone carries this torch. —Winston “Burning Spear” Rodney

http://www.whereitzatlive.com/burning_spear.htm

Winston ‘Burning Spear’ Rodney’s Marcus Garvey is one of those precious few perfect albums that you can listen to over and over again without ever reaching for the dreaded ‘skip’ button. Along with a few other classic albums mid-Seventies albums like Bob Marley’s Natty Dread and Bunny Wailer’s Blackheart Man, Marcus Garvey helped to define its own genre—roots reggae. But unlike the fiery intensity of Marley and Wailer, Spear’s music is relentlessly languid. The rhythmic patterns are intense and forceful, yet somehow gentle. Think of the rise and fall of the oceanic tide: soothing and quiet, certainly, but no less powerful for all its calmness. It’s difficult to listen to any of the songs of Marcus Garvey without swaying in place, eyes closed. Garvey's Ghost is the dub version of Marcus Garvey. On Ghost, Spear and Co.’s* songs are stripped to the essentials—bass, drum and guitar—and the exquisite rhythms are fully revealed. I love everything about the original Marcus Garvey album including Spear’s lyrics and his patented ‘dry and heavy’ style of chant/singing. But I’m a rhythm child; I like the dub versions as much as the vocal versions. The dubs aren’t any longer than the vocal tracks, but they seem to be. The drum and the bass have their own stories to tell and listening to the dubs is the best way to hear them. Then again, if you listen to just the dub, you don’t get the wit, truth and beauty of the vocals. Which is where the so-called ‘Showcase’ mix comes in. A Showcase mix is created when the producer links the dub to the end of the vocal version, usually seamlessly. Examples of Showcase-style releases are Aswad’s 1981 album Showcase and Black Uhuru’s 1979 album Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner (which was originally issued in Jamaica as, you guessed it, Showcase). Marcus Garvey & Garvey’s Ghost are individual albums; the dubs and vocals aren’t showcased, they’re separate. But thanks to Roxio Toast with Jam and about fifteen minutes of work per song on my part, we present to you three Burning Spear Showcase mixes. And by the way, if you want the original versions, you know what to do. Altogether now: BUY THE ALBUM! —Mtume ya Salaam * Burning Spear was originally a trio of vocalists: Delroy Hines, Rupert Millington and, of course, Winston Rodney. Following the Marcus Garvey album, Rodney went solo but kept the name Burning Spear.

          I think we should live up in the hills          “Our people are our mountains,” Amilcar Cabral said commenting on the geo-political topography of Cape Verde/Guinea Bissau in response to the classic guerilla supposition that a liberation movement needed inaccessible regions in order to survive against the oppressor’s use of modern military technology. What, you may rightfully ask, does that observation have to do with Burning Spear? Well, here’s another connection for you: Damian Marley! “Kalamu, what you been smoking?” I know that’s your next question. Well, check it: Mtume and I are two generations commenting on this roots reggae music, and though we both love our roots, our relationship thereto is different. A few weeks back we posted a Marley week and featured a Damian Marley track with Mtume writing an extended riff that was much commented upon—we’re still getting (and posting) comments. You can click on “contemporary” and go to the Damian cut to read the comments. If we understand the metaphor, living in the hills, means not only escaping Babylon as in Exodus but also means groundation with one’s people, “being” among the masses (which, by the way, means embracing of the whole and not just of the parts of the people with whom one might be comfortable). This a here music was music we not just listen to, but music we performed. Do you remember the days slavery? That was a stable in our poetry ensemble performances. We would sing/chant, force the question forward. One time we were somewhere in Louisiana performing on some program or the other and a state Senator was present. He felt compelled to respond to our performance, saying, of course, that things had changed. That was pre-Katrina. Maybe things had changed and were continuing to change, but, damn if Labor Day 2005 and immediately thereafter didn’t look like slavery days to me. So Mtume listens to this music without perhaps realizing he listened to this music as a baby. He is right. He is a rhythm baby. Even in his mother’s womb Burning Spear was pounding. Guess what, dear heart, those two albums that Mtume refers to, well, I used to have and constantly play the original vinyl that I brought back from Jamaica. Maybe these sounds are not in his conscious memory, but they are all up in his birth blood. Spear and Marley and Toots & the Maytals, all of them a flood his ears before he learned to read, was part of the soundtrack as he learned to walk. Indeed, the first time Third World visit New Orleans, our Ahidiana collective fix food for them and we all reason together in our school yard (we had an independent school where we taught out children from birth up through third grade; no Jack and Jill for them, Marcus Garvey, Harriet Tubman, John Coltrane and Bob Marley). For every season, there a reason, your relationship to your past, maps your relationship to your future. Ah so, Damian and Mtume, them a carry the torch forward. They have different conditions to deal with, different relationships to their roots to work out (Mtume take his computer and remix the vocal and the version to produce a showcase). But them a remember. They remember from whence they came even when they don’t recall that their taste for roots music was because of what they were hearing as they slurped their mama's breast milk. Give thanx. —Kalamu ya Salaam

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