Marley junior is jammin' too

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Mobo award winner Damian Marley.

The big moment at this year's Mobo Awards, the one that had the Albert Hall on its feet dancing and singing along, was when Damian Marley closed the show with one of his father's hits, Could You Be Loved?

Even though Bob Marley died nearly 25 years ago, his songs are played daily around the world - No Woman, No Cry, Jammin', Get Up, Stand Up, and Buffalo Soldier are heard booming out of bars and shops from Bali to Botswana.

What a legacy for Damian, the youngest of the Marley boys, to take on. Bob, who was born to a Jamaican mother and white English sailor, blended his politicised roots sound with rock guitar and became the first reggae artist to appeal beyond Jamaica to a rock audience. His early death, from cancer at the age of 36, turned him into an icon, a martyr for peace, racial tolerance and black pride.

Now Damian, the 27-year-old product of Bob's extra-marital affair with Cindy Breakspeare, a Jamaican beauty queen crowned Miss World in 1976, hopes to emulate some of his dad's success with his third album, Welcome to Jamrock.

His single of the same name is already in the charts - a feat for a reggae protest song that gets little daytime radio play - and the album, out here on Monday, comes with a buzz.

Damian is not the first of the nine offspring in the extended Marley clan (two daughters, seven sons) to follow in their father's footsteps. His halfbrothers, Ziggy, Julian, Kymani and Stephen, and half-sisters Sharon and Cedella, are all musicians and often perform together.

But it is the gangly, dreadlocked Damian who now seems most likely to pick up where Bob left off and establish himself as a major star outside Jamaica.

The man they call Junior Gong (in reference to his father's original Tuff Gong record label) is already proud owner of a Best Reggae Album Grammy (for his 2001 album Halfway Tree) and a Best Reggae Act Mobo, which he picked up at the Albert Hall last week.

But it is the new album that will really make his name. It is an uncompromising, militant meld of "riddims" and rhymes, and the kind of strident roots reggae more closely associated with Dad.

Damian was born in 1978 and raised by his mother and stepfather in Jamaica. He still lives in Kingston, near the rest of the family, to whom he has always been close, while also spending some of his time now in Miami. He was only three when Bob died, and remembers little about him personally. So when did he become aware that his father was so famous?

"It's difficult to pinpoint one event or occasion when I realised that it was a big deal," Damian says. "But when you tell people who he was, you start to see the reaction. I soon figured out, 'Hmm. Something is special about that'."

Growing up, though, he insists, music was not a priority. "My mother made sure that school came first. It was a very grounded upbringing in that sense." He released his first single, Deejay Degree, at the age of 15, and in 1995 found himself as teenage spokesman for Positively Reggae, a CD compilation that raised awareness and funds for Jamaican schoolchildren who are HIV positive.

It was dancehall "deejays" he saw as a child - Shabba Ranks, Supercat and Ninjaman - who inspired him to get into music. But does the family name mean that he and his brothers are under pressure to be something more than just musicians? "Not really.

People check me out because I'm a Marley. It's good for me. But I express myself how I want, not because of my father."

However, given that they stand for similar things - peace, Rastafarianism, militant statements about Jamaican politics - he must accept that he will always be compared to one of the most admired political lyricists in music history.

"True. But being compared to the greatest is a good thing to be compared to. We're all our father's children, knowing his morals and values. And we share the same faith as Rastas."

This continuation of the Bob Marley and the Wailers tradition emerges most obviously in the new album's opening track, Confrontation, which features a guest appearance from Bob's longtime musical partner, Bunny Wailer. Other guests include US rapper Nas and, more surprisingly, troubled R&B star Bobby Brown, better known these days for being Mr Whitney Houston and for his many run-ins with the law.

Another guest is veteran Jamaican star Bounty Killer, one of the reggae artists who has been criticised for violently homophobic lyrics. Damian Marley's music is refreshingly free of references to "batty bwoys" and " chichi men" but I have to ask whether he thinks reggae is fairly targeted on this issue.

"It's a funny thing. Reggae is not the big money music. So, when they fight against our music, millions of dollars are not being lost. A lot of rock groups and hip-hop groups who speak against homosexuals in that way, yet they don't really get this fight."

He may have a point, but plenty of lyrics appear to advocate "burning" gays. "When them speak of fire it is a spiritual fire," Marley responds, not entirely comfortingly. "Part of it comes from the deejay battling culture and trying to get an immediate crowd response at the dance.

But another part comes from faith. The churches all speak against homosexuality. But you don't walk around Jamaica and see homosexuals hanging from the lampposts. It's a spiritual burning and saying that they don't want their kids to come up with that kind of influence."

And what about Damian? Does he not want Jamaica's kids (he has none of his own) coming up with a homosexual influence? "They're not a part of my life. Me have more problem with lesbians. Because there's less girls for us. You get me? But homosexuals are not a part of my life, so I don't involve them."

I feel like pointing out that working inside the British and American music business means that gays are very much a part of his life, whether he likes it or not. But a hostile stare from Marley lets me know that this line of questioning is now closed.

At least the ebullient and eclectic music of Welcome to Jamrock proves that you can make tough and committed dancehall reggae without conforming to homophobic stereotypes. Though many of its songs are about love, sex and dancing, the political tracks preach tolerance and solidarity, with Confrontation, in particular, making the case for revolution. What kind of revolution might that be?

"There is a revolution going on already. But it's a mind thing - a mental revolution. There's no way we can fight against these kind of powers and think we're going to win with violence. You have to protect yourself if you love your life. It's a mental revolution in terms of how we think and how we take our destiny into our own hands.

"Probably we should stop blaming religions and political systems and start blaming ourselves. People have to take control of their own lives. Information is available to all on the internet and in books. If you don't search, it's your fault."

He is already beginning to sound like his father, but wouldn't it be exciting if the most talented living Marley also became the first contemporary reggae artist to preach tolerance to gays and women along with everyone else?

 

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