Review Summary: A more electronic variation on the classic Reggae sound
Although albums by Bob Marley and Peter Tosh -- not to mention Black Uhuru’s earlier and more conventional work -- might objectively be a step up from our album here,
Now, they'll never be
better in my mind. The reasons are just a basic part of my developmental psychology: I picked it up when I was a teenager a couple years after its release; it was my introduction to the genre; and I was into all sorts of electronic music at the time, so I never gave the electronic sounds a second thought.
On Vocal Delivery and Lyrics
Jamaican English is easily my vote for the most beautiful variety of spoken English. I love all accents, and there are some contenders on my short-list of favorites (Irish and South-Eastern American come to mind), but Jamaican is just naturally melodious, in my opinion.
But
opinions don't have very much to do with how I experience music. Don't get me wrong, for better or for worse your opinions and everybody else's -- most especially my music-loving friends during my teenage years -- all those opinions, I say, matter in some complicated way. What I mean is that I equate "opinion" with "thought," and I don't really
think about music; I
feel it. An Encyclopedia Britannica editor made a similar point when they wrote that:
Music is not like a foreign language that requires an expert to translate it for a lay audience. It is a universal tongue. It either speaks to each listener directly, or it does not speak to them at all. If it speaks, the critic's words are already redundant. If it does not speak, a problem exists that their words cannot solve.
For some reason Reggae, Pink Floyd, Doom Metal and Classical are about the only forms of slow music that consistently speak to me directly.
One of the hindrances: Besides its tempo, slow music is often uplifting. I don't really like uplifting music. What does that say about my psyche? It's weird, because I (usually) like people, and have had a number of good times with a number of good friends. I love a good laugh; I appreciate humor, even if I'm no comic myself. So I'm not a
total sourpuss.
Yet there it is: I think sappy lyrics usually suck. So one of the most startling aspects of my reaction to Reggae is how I embrace all kinds of upbeat, joyous, feel-good sh
it that usually makes me want to gag. Take the lyrics to the second track,
Peace and Love:
Peace and love in the north/Peace and love in the South
Peace and love in the east, oh
Peace and love in the universe.
Usually by this time in such a song I'm rolling my eyes and thinking such uncharitable thoughts as "Peace and love? Please. Human beings are aggressive, exploitative, narcissistic assholes who deserve to be replaced by robots before we nuke ourselves into extinction or poison ourselves by polluting our own water supplies." But on this song, I'm totally receptive to the message.
I get it. "Yeah, man. That's right. Peace and love," I think, listening and inhaling deeply. "Peace and love
in the whole fcuk'n universe!"
Or consider the lyrics for the third track,
Army Band:
Satan follow the army band...
Down in Babylon where it's like a battlefield
Too much war and gun shot wound
At first glance shouldn't these lyrics be, I don't know, growled along with chugging guitars and double-bass drumming? But Black Uhuru just belts them out joyously over major-key harmony as if they're not talking about the King of Hell and an army of demons. And, again, I accept it;
I'm totally with them.
Not all the songs on the album are as bright as these, of course. The artists have a wide harmonic palette, and they don't shy away from minor keys completely. But they never approach anywhere near a dark or gloomy sound.
On Blues Scales
The other aspect of Reggae that speaks to me directly, surprisingly, is their use of blues scales and chords. I love most of the songs on this album, and there's a lot of bluesy-sounding stuff going on in almost every one of them.
For all my professed "love of accents," I get seriously irritated by them when I'm on the phone with a customer-service rep who's trying to clarify a credit card issue with me, but who speaks in a thick accent. For me, trying to get into bluesy styles of music is a little like that; the melodies and stuff are fine and all but, honestly, they sort of get on my nerves, and I'd rather listen to something I can understand better.
Now, I'm not
totally ignorant of Blues and its Jazz and Rock derivatives. Outside of some classic Floyd albums, I've got a playlist of fifty or so songs I really love: A Clapton track here, a Stones track there; a couple of Jefferson Airplanes; a handful of Creedence Clearwater Revivals. But fifty is a pathetically small list compared to what's out there.
And it's not for lack of trying. I once ran into and checked out a Teaching Company lecture called "The Elements of Jazz" from a library, hoping to acquire a taste for the roots of Blues and Rock; Jazz is a branch of the family tree, and it's the branch of the family I like the
least, so I thought I'd start there. Plus, there are thousands of jazz songs I've never been able to tap into. But it was no good. After seven hours of lecture all I got out of it was a love for Scott Joplin, who was innovative but only in the syncopated rhythms; the scales and harmony are still European-Classical.
But blues-based riffs work marvelously in Reggae, forming the melodic foundation of much of Marley's and Tosh's music. On this album, for example on the songs
Take Heed and
Freedom Fighter -- not to mention their cover of Hendrix's
Hey Joe -- bluesy music has never spoken to me more directly. I've never understood Hendrix fluently, but when I hear it in a Reggae context it speaks far more clearly. Go figure.
All this is similar to my relationship with cilantro. You know, the herb. I've never cared for it in Mexican food, not when it's used so heavy that I actually notice it. To my ears, blues scales used outside of a Reggae context
sound like cilantro
tastes when someone at Chipotle gets carried away with adding the bitter herb to my burrito.
But cilantro is wonderful in Indian food. When I have the ambition to make butter chicken at home, I add so much cilantro that I end up practically making a cilantro-butter-chicken salad.
The syncopated rhythms and blues scales were, one way or another, of African origin. They migrated through several generations of musicians, moving from these origins and from Joplin and into Armstrong, through Howlin' Wolf and into the Rolling Stones and beyond. The flavor is African, but the
substrate upon which it was added was European Classical. I speculate that maybe that's why those flavors end up striking me the way excess cilantro does on my Chipotle -- as slightly distasteful.
The African mixes poorly with the European substrate.
But cilantro is of
Indian origin, so it's more compatible with
Indian cuisine. Likewise, Reggae has a solid Caribbean -- and ultimately an African and Indigenous -- substrate, so adding bluesy sounds is just increasing its
African-ness, making it more authentic and therefore better.
Right?
No, screw that -- now I'm just talking out of my ass. Millions of people love cilantro in Mexican cuisine, and millions of people enjoy the bluesy foundations of their favorite Jazz and Rock songs. Blues just works better in Reggae than it does elsewhere
to my ears, that's all. No reasoning or logic involved, no translation necessary.
I'm not totally sure that music speaks directly to each of us,
unadulterated; there's usually some social influence going on from the environment. But I don't think I've ever heard an album that spoke more directly to me than this one.
For anyone interested in the machinery of -- and in my opinion the less interesting part of -- music, Wikipedia has clean articles that illustrate the various scales with audio files:
Blues Scales: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blues_scale
Major Scale: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Major_scale
Minor Scales: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minor_scale
Chromatic Scale: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chromatic_scale
Pentatonic Scales: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentatonic_scale
