K’naan with the Marleys: A young lion on the rise
Understand this — the Marleys are not ordinary human beings like you and me. Born into a lineage revered in many parts of the globe as a form of divine royalty, brothers Stephen and Damian brought a sense of ceremony to their sold-out Antone’s performance. And it began well before they even hit the stage, bringing with them, as always, a rasta cat to wave the Jamaican Ethiopian flag continuously throughout their performance.
The Marleys represent.
They carry with them their father Bob’s mission as a transcontinental cultural ambassador, framing the struggles of the Third World in the language of common humanity to bring a “One Love” consciousness to the West. 
On Thursday the voice of that struggle was most clearly articulated by the “young lion from Africa” whom the Marleys hand-picked to open the show: the Somali-Canadian rapper K’naan. With a slight figure, an affable smile and a humble demeanor, the 28-year-old musician played with a minimal backing ensemble anchored by African drums. But with his presence, his charisma and his clear sense of purpose, he had the audience fully engaged within minutes of taking the stage.
The message he carried was both of brutality and hope. Blending the pulse of the drum with East Coast hip-hop bravado on the track “Hardcore,” he painted a bleak scene from his childhood full of machine-gun-toting children, corrupt politicians and African-style gangland rule. When he brought it to a cadence with the stinger — “If I rhymed about home and got descriptive/ I’d make Fifty Cent look like Limp Bizkit” —many in the house screamed along. But the most powerful moments of the performance came when the earnest performer actively enlisted the help of the audience. Breaking it down a capella, he taught the willing crowd the chorus “When I get older/ I will be stronger/ they’ll call me freedom/ just like a waving flag,” then unwound a harrowing tale of childhood horrors and a journey to America fraught with struggle and pain. Each time the chorus repeated, the audience’s voice grew stronger alongside K’naan’s, reinforcing an overwhelming sense of triumph that actually moved me to tears.
The tone for the show was set and the intensity only increased as the Marleys hit the stage. Stephen, supporting his new album, “Mind Control,” was billed as the show’s headliner, but he actually ended up opening for his brother Damian, aka Jr. Gong, the larger superstar of the family. Stephen looks and sounds eerily like his father, and half of his set comprised new-school renditions of Bob Marley standards. Nobody seemed to mind at all, but it was when Jr. Gong burst onto the stage with a raucous version of “All Night” that the entire house went crazy. With a hard-driving dancehall-oriented edge, Damian, the youngest male Marley child, is the one who puts a ferocious new spin on the family sound, and the crowd at Antone’s couldn’t get enough of him. From the contemplative anti-cocaine joint “Pimper’s Paradise” to an explosive version of the 2005 hit “Welcome To Jamrock,” Jr. Gong put it down hard, and at the end of the show the crowd screamed ceaselessly for a full five minutes until assured of an encore (which ended up lasting for a good 15 minutes).
This show was ultra-super-sold out, with countless music lovers scouring the street outside Antone’s for available tickets before the show. It was also easily one of the top five shows I’ve ever seen in my life. Hopefully next time, the promoters will have the good sense to book a larger venue. I left the venue feeling both musically and spiritually revitalized. And man, it felt good.
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