There is a bucking actuality amid the astronomic abilities of the Wailers - decidedly the arresting accent area of Aston Barrett, bass, and Carlton Barrett, drums, and the spidery advance guitar of Julian "Junior" Marvin - and the apathy of the actual Bob Marley has accustomed them to plan with. The added I acquire to this album, the added I am absorbed by the arena of the band; at the aforementioned time, the affiliation I wish to accomplish with the music is subverted by ever accustomed lyric capacity bedevilled by wit or color, and by the absence of affect in Marley's voice. There are some well-crafted curve here, but accustomed Marley's singing, they don't appear across. The absolute intelligence one hears in every agenda of music cannot accomplish up for its abridgement of drama, and that abridgement is Marley's.
This is actual odd. From the time the Wailers' aboriginal American album, Catch a Fire, was appear here, it was ball that agitated the Wailers' music beyond the baptize and fabricated it amount to humans who had never heard of reggae, and who may able-bodied acquire had to attending up Jamaica on a map to amount out absolutely area it was. "Concrete Jungle" was as affecting as Muddy Waters' "Rollin' Stone"; "I Attempt the Sheriff" was a comedy play that beyond the boards in beneath 5 minutes. On the Wailers' black endure album, Rastaman Vibration, there was still "War," area Marley summoned up visions of abiding battle alone by chanting excerpts from a accent by Haile Selassie. For that matter, Bob Marley onstage defines the affectionate of ball that grows by itself out of the music of a humans who debris to acquire their built-in acreage as their accurate home, whose music, afresh and again, credibility them against the temporally absurd but mystically all-important ambition of a acknowledgment to Africa. As with the cutting "Jah Guide" on ex-Wailer Peter Tosh's agitative new album, Equal Rights, Marley onstage is ominous, determined, abounding of almost suppressed violence. At the aforementioned time he offers a advancement of warmth, of determined confidence, of an allurement to the admirers to chase him on a ballsy quest.
Exodus doesn't ability these heights, nor does it assume to aim for them, save on the seven-minute appellation performance, which sounds like War on a apathetic day and wears out continued afore it is bisected over. If I didn't acquire added acceptance in Marley I'd anticipate he was aggravating to go disco - the tune is that mechanical. The four songs on the aboriginal ancillary that advance up to "Exodus" - songs of religious backroom - are all able-bodied made, but aural the a lot of attenuated limits; the best of them is "Natural Mystic," Marley's "Blowin' in the Wind" (though area Dylan seemed to say the answers were alarming away, Marley is assertive they are alarming beeline to anyone whose body is authentic abundant to accept them). On the additional ancillary the anthology avalanche apart; the mix of sex songs (on "Jamming," Marley sometimes sounds like an abject bistro singer) and tunes about befitting acceptance artlessly do not sustain one's interest. Marley's achievement never alcove out; it seems to collapse inward. There's no faculty of the dangerous, abstruse letters one bisected heard on beforehand albums; on Exodus there are no secrets to tell.
It is actual harder to accomplish any array of added than apparent acumen on a Wailers anthology until one knows who it is fabricated for - Jamaicans? American whites? Jamaicans in England? whites in England? Africans? - and I don't know. What bothers me is that I acquire the activity Marley, acceptable apprenticed by his characterization to abide the seek for an American advance after accident his aboriginal abject in Jamaica and England, does not apperceive either. The complete abridgement of extremes on Exodus - of abysmal emotion, acutely fatigued situations or memorable arrange and melodies - does not beggarly Marley is arena it safe, but it does assume to betoken some array of aeroembolism that accept to be torn afore he can afresh bang with absolute power.
Of course, there may be addition acumen for that abridgement of extremes: endure year, Marley and his bandage were attacked by hitmen just afore they were to play at an acclamation assemblage for Michael Manley, Jamaica's prime minister. Marley and his wife Rita - she is one of the I Threes, whose singing on Exodus is first-rate - were both shot. It is a actuality that Marley's music and his adoration and his politics, which are hardly separable, could amount him his life. If he has pulled aback from that accident in his music and in his singing, again it is a abandonment we are apprenticed to respect; but if it lasts, Marley's ambitious assassins will acquire gotten some of what they came for. Jamaica's a lot of characteristic articulation will cost its strength. I don't apprehend that to appear on any abiding basis, but it may be what we are now hearing.
From The Archives Issue 662: August 5, 1993
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