| CanWest News Service |
Thursday, April 12, 2007
|
On top of the wailing sirens and aggressive beat-box of his first single, Traffic Jam, from solo debut Mind Control, Stephen Marley joins his brother, Damian (Jr. Gong), to trade rhymes about a marijuana bust the two were involved in back in 2002.
But it's not the usual drug-bust-as-badge-of-honour rhymes that guarantee the album will have massive record sales: for the Marleys, the track highlights an unjust police action in the face of something that, as devout Rastafarians in the tradition of their iconic father, Bob Marley, they consider to be an expression of their culture.
"I came back from a concert and the police pulled me over -- for what, I don't know. They found two spliffs [in our car] and locked us up," Marley says about the incident, which occurred in Tallahassee, Fla., on Feb. 13.
After the arrest, the brothers were booked and spent a few hours behind bars after being charged with possessing less than 20 grams of marijuana.
"It didn't feel right," he says of the arrest. "When you do something wrong, you feel it. If I run a red light, I know I did something wrong. But it never felt right for me, where they put me. The ward where they put me, I wouldn't even wish that on an animal."
It was this experience that inspired Marley to write The Traffic Jam. That track and two others from the album (Officer Jimmy and Iron Bars) form a trilogy about the incident.
While The Traffic Jam is the bonafide club track and Officer Jimmy is a humorous interlude, the prison song, Iron Bars, proves to be the most powerful. Over a menacing guitar riff, Marley wails, "Rebels for life / We rebel for the right / Let me out / Let me out / I'm an angry lion."
Whether or not you agree with Marley, it's undeniable that an artist using his music as a platform to protest seems as far away from this generation's musical climate as when Bob Marley used to do it back when he was recording in the 1970s.
One could argue the reason for lack of messaged music is the musician-as-soapbox pundit is no longer welcome (just ask the Dixie Chicks). But it's this climate that Marley seeks to outwit to get his message across.
The music industry "is a radio-driven thing and basically... what we are trying to say isn't what they are trying to feed the people. We are trying to educate the people when they are trying to brainwash them," says Marley, whose titular track Mind Control speaks heavily to this point.
"But, at the same time, if you can trick them so that, by the time that they listen to [the music], it feels so good, they don't realize that there's a message we slipped through the gate. So, we have to come up with a formula where it feels so good to them that they don't realize."
Marley's formula is characterized by a coupling of head-nodding grooves with lyrics that break listeners out of complacency by asking questions, challenging accepted social mores and spreading positivity.
It's something he's carried out not only on this album but also in his 20-year career as a member of family group Ziggy Marley & The Melody Makers and as a prolific producer, whose credits include work on Jr. Gong's Grammy-winning 2005 effort, Welcome to Jamrock.
"If you give the people enough positivity [through music], then it's going to have an effect," he says.
"But they don't want that, obviously. They want to hear, 'Smack that ass' and things like that. I'm not trying to downplay that music. It's fun music, too. I dance to it. But, at the same time, positive music should be given an equal chance, so that people have an opportunity to learn things."
Marley's music provides an opportunity to learn, but he doesn't want to be the lone voice, which is why he's adamant more artists get the chance to create music that runs counter to the status quo. His ultimate suggestion?
"Let's do it half and half. Half conscious music and the other half can be playful."
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