ROCKY DAWUNI’s` ‘Hymns for the Rebel Soul’- THE FUTURE OF REGGAE?

Okay, so I’m wrong sometimes. Not good enough? Okay, so I’m wrong lots of times. Still not good enough? Mea culpa mea culpa mea culpa mea culpa hari Krishna hari Krishna hari rama hari hari… just kidding. But what happened is that Rocky Dawuni played at the California Plaza water court in LA last year, and- not being familiar with his music beforehand- I was put off by his flying locks and macho strut, like God’s self-appointed peacock come to give form and color (and pheromones) to an otherwise murky muddy black-and-white world. We the lockless ones can be like that sometimes. We’ve got pheromones, too (in all fairness, I can be even harsher on beautiful women pretending to be accomplished artists). So, unimpressed with the first song or two, I left in a huff, assuming the man was more strut than strum. I then proceeded to skewer the man in this little musical blog I do. Fortunately I listened to his MySpace offerings before publishing, which- especially the song ‘In Ghana’- were pretty damn good. I stood corrected.

There is a point to be made, though- music with a message risks losing that message if it becomes too obscured behind flashy showmanship. And reggae is nothing if not music with a message, whether religion, politics, marijuana, or... some combination. Too often since Bob Marley’s death this all gets packaged up into some sort of self-styled smoke-enlightened messiah complex which pretends to know answers to all life’s mysteries- including questions not even asked yet- that bends dangerously close to conspiracy theory’s know-it-all younger brother. The themes get too heavy sometimes, and the music gets lost. The trick is to wrap up heavy themes in small sweet packages, like the proverbial spoonful of sugar. Musicians should stick to what they know best, also. We’re all in trouble when we start getting our politics from celebrities like singers and actors and comedians and… hey, wait a minute…

So now I’m thoroughly chastised, because rocky Dawuni’s new album- ‘Hymns for the Rebel Soul’- is killer. Dawuni stakes out his turf right away with ‘Download the Revolution,’ a slightly ‘tron number that updates Gil Scott-Heron’s observation/dictate ‘the revolution will be televised.’ With lyrics like ‘conscious music revolution… to wipe away musical pollution’ you get the idea. Next, ‘African Reggae Fever’ is a self-congratulatory little dittie, with a nice gospel-like opening, that serves to advance Dawuni’s mission to unite Africa in some sort of reggae-inspired cosmic consciousness. ‘Extraordinary Woman’ then gets into the heart of the album, literally, pure love song, pure hit material. ‘When I first saw you in that crowd, sweet emotion swept throught my soul’… sounds like love to me. Maybe the album’s best song- ‘Walls Tumbling Down’- sits right in clean-up position in the batting order. Here Dawuni accomplishes the difficult task of sliding a political message in with irresistible licks, and does it with a master’s touch- “me again… knocking on your door… till all your walls come tumbling down… me again, like Jericho before.. Babylon walls come tumbling down”, speaking for all the little people who’ve demanded justice and had to wait in line until ‘the time is right.’ After that ‘Master Plan’ is a nice change of pace, complete with bird calls and some really nice brass, albeit with a message slightly muddy.

At this point the album’s a hit regardless of what Dawuni wants to do. He could hum nursery rhymes for the next fifteen minutes, and it’d still be a great album. But he keeps laying down more grooves as if it were effortless. ‘Road to Destiny’- “never give up hope… on the road to destiny”… this is good stuff. Dawuni shows maturity and social responsibility with ‘Take It Slow (Love Love Love)’- “listen to my music before you go”, notable in a continent where AIDS is the leading cause of death and machismo is slow to tolerate affronts to its dignity. ‘Jerusalem’ even pays tribute to the Jewish culture’s massive contributions to our modern world with a melody that sounds a lot like Manu Chao (clan destino, maybe?) and echoes Bob’s ‘Lion in Zion’, even going so far as to hypothesize that Israel’s problems are due largely to jealousy: ‘though you sit in isolation… you are the whole world’s inspiration.’ It’s a sign of political maturity to stake out an unpopular position, especially in an Africa that is increasingly Muslim… and for good reason.

Reggae is an important moral force in the African diaspora, and that means a lot here on the ground in Ghana (I like to travel to the countries I’m reviewing to get a better feel of it). It’s no accident that it emerged from the trenchtowns of Kingston, the one city in the Caribbean that can easily rival Africa’s biggest and baddest. In a continent where the most developed country- South Africa- is arguably the most socially horrific, answers don’t come easy. Street crime is out of control at almost unimaginable levels in the very countries where AIDS runs rampant concurrently with political corruption. With the exception of Islam, there are few moral compasses to be had… except for Rastafarianism… and reggae music. Rocky Dawuni does not shirk from his social duties here, and he does it with licks and chops that rival the best of them. The album indeed is more about social responsibility than rebelliousness, which is overrated anyway IMHO. If there’s any justice in the world, this will be Rocky’s breakthrough album. Simply said, it’s probably the best reggae album I’ve heard since you-know-who. Hardie K says check it out.

‘JOYFUL NOISE’- VIRGIN ISLANDS’ REGGAE

No one has ever accused me of being reggae’s greatest fan, though I’ve always liked it. It’s just that after its early good-time urban Caribbean florescence and its Marley-defined climax, the good-timers turned to dancehall, leaving reggae itself with some big shoes to fill and a messiah complex that was more burdensome than enlightening. Fast-forward thirty years and the results are interesting. Ol’ Bob was prolific in more ways than one, of course, and little by little a new generation of Marleys indeed HAS been filling his shoes, albeit one toe at the time. Meanwhile a plethora of music from Africa has given plenty of alternatives for exotic palm-fringed listening, including several opportunities for reggae-style music without all the rasta-stuff. The first probes of African music thirty years ago, that uncovered Fela Kuti and King Sunny Ade, were indeed attempts to find suitable Marley substitutes. I reckon they did. Just because reggae created a new genre of ‘world music’ doesn’t mean they had any monopoly on it.

Like other genres previous and subsequent, reggae had repercussions far beyond its original borders, particularly within the Caribbean, where it is pretty much THE de facto collective national anthem of the region, at least of the modern English-derived cultures. That extends as far as Guyana on the north shore of the South American continent, and includes the Virgin Islands, of course, including the US Virgin Islands, which is where I Grade Records is based. It’s not a bad place to be, where the States meet the islands, and now something of a secondary center for reggae music. Well, early results for I Grade Records have been good and they’ve got a compilation album to prove it. It’s called ‘Joyful Noise’ and it’ll be available to the public in January.

Best of the lot is probably Duane Stephenson from Jamaica with the album’s killer opening song ‘Hard Times.’ It’s classic reggae, with the classic beat and classic lyrics, like ‘Hard times… hard times… I’ve got to run and hide and find a place to lay my head.’ He also contributes another song, also classic in style, the downtrodden but optimistic “I’m Fine,’ with lyrics like ‘I’m sitting in the corner but I’m fine… nevermind.” Queen Omega seconds the emotion while offering a solution with ‘Footsteps’- “Jah is our only friend, he sticks with me to the end.” Yes, for Rasta-based reggae, Jah is still the be-all and end-all, while Jesus doesn’t rate quite so highly, as in ‘We Want Reparations’ by VI’s own Batch- “in Jesus’ name they were so deceptive”- notwithstanding Promised Land Ethiopia’s history as one of the oldest of Christian countries. The chain of injustice goes all the way back through recorded history, as remembered in Pressure Busspipe’s ‘Modern Pharoah’- “Release all the shackles and chains… I’ll never be a victim no more.”

Reconstructing history to suit modern tastes and trends is always tricky business, of course, and the songs that work best are the ones that deal with it on a personal or moral level, not a vengeful one. Reggae has always been at its best with positive and optimistic messages. Guyanese Jahdan Blakkamoore is one of the best at this, with ‘Flying High’- “a new day is dawning and a new song to sing” or ‘Red Hot’- “you can really make a difference if you’re willing… we’ve never known how it feels to be loved, wanted, cared for…”. This is good stuff. Of course reggae has always been better at its lyrics than its melodies, and this compilation is no different, not that the music is weak, just repetitive. Some songs, indeed, are musically almost carbon copies of each other, the same tune but with different words. Only when reggae gets its music up to the same level as its lyrics will it be able to take its rightful place as one of the music world’s great genres. Until then, ‘Joyful Noise’ is as good- or better- than anything out there. Give it a listen.

SANTERO RETURNS REGGAETON TO ITS ROOTS

It’s time to re-think urban music- rap, hip-hop, and especially reggaeton. Despite its huge popularity, and its sociological acceptance as the voice of frustration emanating from its most honest protagonists, it’s never really been socially acceptable. The rap against rap, just like reggaeton, has always been its perceived misogyny, its glorification of violence and crime, its obscenity, and its adolescent posturing, i.e. more attitude than music. Reggaeton has always had more music than hip-hop of course, which is essentially a spoken-word genre which almost no one would dare call poetry. Yet despite its adoption and adaptation by almost every culture and language in the world as a voice of the oppressed, the old charges still stick. It’s the lyrics, dummy. You can’t undo them. You can hire Ice-T to play a cop on TV, but you can’t change the lyrics to ‘Cop Killer’. In Puerto Rico the police and National Guard were even called out to confiscate reggaeton music wherever they could find it in an attempt to stamp out the cause of the island’s moral decay at the source. Then ‘Gasolina’, the hit by Daddy Yankee in 2005, went platinum and all that changed. All of a sudden reggaeton was okay, a true crossover success, transformed overnight by a cute little novelty song, fought over by politicians instead of being fought against.

But on 'El Hijo de Obatala' Santero goes beyond all the hype, on the one hand returning reggaeton to its musical Caribbean roots, and on the other taking it in a new direction as a potent moral force for those same people for whom it was once a cry of anguish and hate, and little more. As the name suggests, reggaeton has its origins as an adaptation of reggae music into the Spanish language and its derived culture in the Americas, particularly Panama and Puerto Rico. If it got its start with the Jamaican laborers on the Panama Canal, it got its real push with Bob Marley’s surge to mass popularity and poster-boy acceptance as a hero to downtrodden third-world peoples everywhere. Many reggaeton lyrics at first were English-language reggae simply translated to espanol and sung right over the original melodies. It’s no accident that this would occur in the Hispanic countries most closely associated with America and the English language. As time passed and reggaeton evolved it adopted Jamaican dancehall and especially American hip-hop as its primary influences, gradually moving away from the optimism and philosophical balancing act of Bob Marley into something more materialistic and sometimes sinister.

Santero puts the spirituality back into reggaeton, all the while never losing the edge that makes it reggaeton in the first place. Thus a path that started with his birthplace in Guatemala comes full circle. With its traditional Maya culture and spectacular landscape, Guatemala may be one of the most beautiful countries in the world, but underneath it’s also one of the ugliest. I used to think that Lake Atitlan was the coolest place imaginable- until they found a dead body in the ravine next to our house- and the war was on. Everybody knows about the political violence of the 80’s, but may not know about the traffic in babies and body parts that continues to this day. Traditional Mayas may worship the old gods carved on stones on isolated hilltops, but evangelical Christians are the primary religious force in a country still nominally Catholic. A traditional Maya woman may still wear the huipil that identifies her place of birth and binds her to a lineage stretching backward into a remote infinity, but that doesn’t help the Guat City street urchin scrounging for scraps and for whom glue is the drug of choice. That’s the social and cultural milieu into which Santero was born. He left with his family when things got so bad in the 80’s that anything would be better.

Fortunately Santero always had music in his life, his father being the leader of a regionally popular cumbia and salsa band in Guatemala, a vocation he continued with at least some belated success in the US. This made a huge impression on the young Santero, he quickly absorbing current American musical influences, but maybe slightly less than the impression ultimately made on him by Santeria, a misnomer for the Yoruba-derived religion especially popular in Cuba and even quietly immortalized by Desi Arnaz in ‘Babalu’. Even in the back streets of Communist-to-the-death Havana, to this day you can still find shops stacked head to foot with items of adoration to the Orishas. But Santero went farther than that; he was initiated as a priest, disciple of the deity Obatala. The rest is history. His music from that point onward became a manifestation of that discipline and that spiritual presence. It’s served him well apparently. It even works for me, and I’m hardly what you would’ve called a reggaeton fan, at least not until recently…

El Hijo de Obatala (Son of Obatala) is the culmination of that spiritual infusion into Santero’s music, and the lyrics are full of it. From the opening song ‘Abre Camino’ (‘Open a Path’) to the final tribute to the warrior-saint ‘Ochosi’, Santero sings of inner city frustrations- “los que caen son los innocentes… ando buscando la justicia” (“the innocent are the ones who fall… I go looking for justice”), but without being defeated by it. His religion is his savior, just as it was for his hero Bob Marley. In ‘Baba Ade’ the divine Obatala himself “siempre me perdone sin reproche… alivia mi pena… accompaneme siempre” (“always pardons me without reproach… relieving my pain… always accompanying me”). He evens deals with environmental issues in ‘Agua del Mar’- “el calentamiento… parece suicidio” (“global warming… seems like suicide”), but the issues are mostly personal. A true ‘spirit walker’, as Santero calls himself, must even deal with death, and that he does, in ‘Madre de Nueve’- “el dia que me muere no me van a enterrar… nadie va llorar… recibeme” (the day that I die they won’t bury me… nobody will cry… receive me’). If he had omitted that pesky little detail of life- its opposite, its denial- I might have been skeptical about his spiritual enlightenment. He’s the real thing.

If you think you’ll need to brush up on your high-school Spanish to enjoy Santero, don’t worry- the music will carry you through. The surprising thing is its diversity, hardly a song repeating another’s licks in a genre I’d long given up as a one-off. The cumbia and salsa background serve Santero well here, and he dips liberally into both to keep the beat hopping. That means congas, brass, and flute, the works. The Marley influence is still there, in both words and music, lilting and optimistic. But maybe what’s most surprising is another voice from the grave, being properly coaxed and channeled- Marvin Gaye, complete with female back-up in English, to help re-align the focus. These days, after all, what better describes our dilemmas better than a phrase from another chaotic era- “What’s goin’ on?” Give DJ Santero’s ‘El Hijo de Obatala’ a listen- you just might be pleasantly surprised. I was.