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9/19/05

My Jr. Gong Odyssey (Welcome to Jamrock Release)

  • So at the Labor Day Parade, I found out that Damian"Jr. Gong" Marley's new album, "Welcome to Jamrock" would be released last Monday atop a free performance. Although the youngest veteran did not sing a single note at the Carnival, his obvious charisma, rave reviews of the album, the video and okay the Marley name piqued my interest. Having seen a very junior Jr. Gong in concert with his brothers over 6 years ago, I still thought of him as that skinny kid jumping up and down the stage, hair that could barely lock, mucho bravado but not much else. I remembered sunny tunes with a clean sound (nonodat vintage Bob ting). Since Bob passed away when I was 6, seeing any Marley live was better than seeing no Marley live back in those days.
Halfway Tree

  • Then I went looking for the award winning Halfway Tree album from 2002. Did Jr. really deserve the Grammy he snatched for it or were naysayers right to suggest he only got it because Sr. didn't? To my surprise and sheer delight (who wants to waste $9 on a whim?) Jr. Gong-with-the-beauty-queen-mom-and-the-rock-star-dad actually has a mind, a style and a sound of his own. (Check out the distinctive Yuh! that opens just about every song on Jamrock.) Halfway Tree was quite the earful what with its heavy dose of advocating for "ghetto yutes." Of course many can't stop repeating that Jr. Gong grew up "above the half" which whatever it means, is not the ghetto. But guess what? Jr. candidly named the album Halfway Tree after that part of Kingston which, like him, is at a crossroads between uptown and downtown Kingston. And as determined as Jr. seems to deliver his father's political message, he can also be light and breezy. There are flirtations with salsa in She Needs My Love, Yami Bolo's Stevie Wonder-like vocals all over, there is the ode to the Paradise Child he "even had to introduce to Cindy" --Mom to him, Miss World 1974 to the rest of us,-- there is even the candor about the fickle torment of being Stuck in Between two very different women. (We knew men had trouble with monogamy but how many freely delve into the logistical --occasionally emotional--dilemma bigamy entails? Ah the Marley magic.)
In line for 3 hours
  • Call it curiosity, call it groupie-ism, call it a symptom of the buppy third-life crisis (three years in corporate America can send you running kicking and screaming for kulcha), I made it to the very beginning of the line to see Jr.Gong's free performance Monday the 13th at the Union Square Virgin Megastore, three hours early! At stake was an opportunity to see how Jr. does live and possibly an autographed copy of the album being released at midnight that night. I congratulated myself for beating the crowd, but panic struck when I realized I had neither book nor headphones.
  • Thankfully a quick look around proved comforting. There was plenty to take in what with the colorful one-time coalition that showed up and formed a line that curled up around the block. Collegy hotties as scantily clad as groupies should be, some looking like contenders to a "Honey" role in a Hip Hop video, others more rootsy but all connected by either Jamaica hoodies or red gold and green wristbands; preppily dressed boys who looked like what I imagine to be Hillel, St George or Phillips Exeter grads now enrolled at NYU or Columbia; real rastafarians of all ages; the occasional model-like blonde with the dreadlocked boyfriend; obvious reggae diehards; and of course one or two yutes in mesh marinas and diamond earrings who may have actually lived what Jr. describes in the Jamrock single.
15 minutes of...

  • My friend Jennifer finally joined me at 10:30, happy I'd already endured the brunt of the pilgrimage. Since even my sweetie declined to make the journey with me, I wasn't complaining. We could at least yap away during the half-hour between us and Jr. Gong. By 11:00 we were inside the cafe. By 11:15, a promoter claimed Jr. Gong was in the house. At 11:30, Jennifer, hungry and tired, left. At 11:45, Jr. Gong finally appeared, in fitted jeans and a long-sleeved white t-shirt, his locks disappointingly pulled up under a bulging rasta cap, looking tired, shorter and skinnier than I pictured him. (Anyone feeding the boy?) I learned later that a ceremonious kickoff had taken place the previous friday at Kingston's 56 Hope Road and that Jr. had been promoting in DC that morning so I feel for Jr. That being said, I had just waited three hours and 15 minutes of unknown rhymes backed up by a lone turntable were kind of hard to swallow in the moment. At the end of the performance though, Jamrock blared in the megastore as people lined up for their copy. I've been playing the album non-stop since and that somehow makes me feel better about the three-hour queue. I did skip the second line required to get the autograph. Would you line up around the corner for someone who's 4 years your junior? :-)
The album
  • Jamrock repeats a lot of the narrative themes from Halfway Tree: someone's descent into junkyism in Pimpa's Paradise; Jr. doing the right thing, reprazentin' for the poverty-stricken ghetto yutes whose plight Daddy shared before making it big and berating the fickle politicians who unleash bad cops. But while Daddy sang about all this, Jr. mostly deejays (i.e. raps dancehall style), too happy to steal the moral highground from fellow uptowner Sean Paul who is more of the bling persuasion. There's the familiar boasting about what the youngest veteran says is his not so Junior sexual prowess. What's new is the nod to monogamy in Beautiful, a Prince-flavored collaboration with none other than Bobby Brown. The sounds are fresh and adventurous: an Ethiopian melody in the background to For the Babies; what sounds like some Nigerian rap on the addictive mantra-like Khaki Suit; the unearthing of Bob's early ska in All Night and of Exodus in the thunderous traditional drumming of Move plus much much more...

6 comments:

  1. Interesting stuff here, good review, I wonder if its his descent into junkyism, because that bwoy look well, well mawga (thin, underfed).....

    Above the half means north of Half Way Tree. Half Way Tree was a big cottonwood tree that was supposedly half way between the center of downtown Kingston and the outskirts of Kingston. The majority of the "ghettos" are below the "Half" and the majority (if not all) of the affluent, well to do areas are north of the "half".

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  2. thanks for the review (and context). i'm looking forward to giving it a listen myself.

    any thoughts on why damian calls his touring band "the empire"? (i suppose it could refer to His Imperial Majesty, Selassie I, but it still seems like a weird affirmation of imperialism, if an appropriative/resignifying move.)

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  3. Hey Wayne, Hey MadBull,
    Had no idea Damian called his band the Empire, probably because I haven't seen it yet. He appeared with a band on Jimmy Kimmel Live the other night but who knows whose band it was. I hear he gave a great concert in Jamaica last month and so I'm planning on making one of his tour concerts before year end so hopefully I'll see them then.

    Who knows why the band is called Empire? There are certainly plenty of references to Kings and Queens on both albums, "queens" designating women worthy of the "King", usually him. He definitely postures as something of a general also on Jamrock's video and on the album art(back picture). But Empire would definitely crank this up a notch.

    Another theme worth noting is this notion of women being "clean" as in "And she keep herself clean me nah go kyatch no rash" in "Beautiful" on Jamrock. That comes up elsewhere on Jamrock and on Halfway Tree as well. In "Beautiful", the woman's "cleanliness" justifies running around "without shoes and socks", quite the metaphore...

    I'm sure Jr. Gong knows that apparent cleanliness doesn't prevent venereal disease so the idea is more one of a spiritual cleanliness, kind of like that sought out in ital food. The resulting lyrics are hilarious though.

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  4. I really appreciate you checking out my site. I'm impressed with your take on our "Jr. Gong"! I'm so proud that he's taken on alot of the things that his father talked about as far as the government and the poverty issues. I 2 checked out his background b4 becoming one of his biggest fans. He's come a long way and I can't wait to see what he has in store for us next! Luv ya' ~Jap

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