May 14, 2007

Music Review | Stephen Marley

Got Reggae: Marley and Marley (and Marley, Too)

Rahav Segev for The New York Times

Stephen Marley, left, was joined by his brother Damian Jr. Gong Marley on Friday night at the Nokia.

Rahav Segev for The New York Times

Stephen Marley interspersed his own songs with hits like "One Love" and "Jammin'" by his father, Bob Marley, on Friday at the Nokia Theater.

By JON PARELES

For brand recognition, the best family name in popular music may well be Marley. Bob Marley’s reggae hits are instant singalongs for multiple generations of listeners worldwide — feel-good music that lets fans equate dance grooves and ganja smoke with political and spiritual righteousness.

Bob Marley’s singing sons — including Stephen Marley, who headlined a sold-out show at the Nokia Theater on Friday night with his brother Damian Jr. Gong Marley as special guest — have latched on to their father’s vocal style and his mix of idealism and pleasure. Stephen has a strong share of the Marley voice, grainy with yearning and determination, and he adds some quirky timing of his own.

Stephen and Damian have been melding their father’s legacy with music that has spread since his death in 1981: the rhymes and electronic tracks of hip-hop and Jamaican dancehall ragga. Both brothers perform on Stephen’s hit “The Traffic Jam,” a ragga song about being stopped by cops who smell marijuana and envy their luxury car. Damian’s music leans toward dancehall while preserving a social conscience, and Stephen’s current album, “Mind Control” (Tuff Gong/Universal Republic), sometimes blends his father’s roots-reggae grooves with the ominous minor chords of gangsta rap. Mr. Cheeks, a New York rapper, joined him onstage for “Iron Bars.”

But for much of his set, Stephen Marley made clear that he was in the family business. His band was modeled on the Wailers, playing steadfast 1970s-style reggae, and he alternated his own songs with his father’s familiar hits. (Since the Nokia Theater has a Broadway address, he couldn’t resist opening with Bob’s “Reggae on Broadway.”) Songs like “No Woman No Cry,” “One Love” and “Jammin’ ” are surefire, and Mr. Marley sang them as well as anyone; the audience enthusiastically joined in. But singing so much of his father’s material made him more like an oldies act than he needs to be.

His band replaced the minimal electronic beat of “The Traffic Jam” with a more standard live dancehall vamp. Backdating the music didn’t affect the roar of approval when Damian Marley arrived onstage. He took over the band for his own songs, among them “Pimpa’s Paradise,” which warns against crack addiction, and “Welcome to Jamrock,” which depicts crime alongside Jamaica’s tourist paradise.

With Damian chanting rhymes and Stephen singing choruses, the music turned contemporary; it was not always as rich as Bob Marley’s, but not nostalgic either. For the finale, Stephen fervently sang his father’s “Exodus,” and Damian reappeared with rapid-fire rhymes from his dancehall update on it, “Move!” They were holding, and extending, the family franchise.

The opening act, K’naan, brought his own social statements. He grew up in Somalia before coming to Harlem, and he rapped and sang — over djembe drumming, acoustic guitar and Ethiopian funk — about violence in the streets of Mogadishu and about facing the worst with a smile and a sense of purpose.