Burning Spear Social Living

Social Living, the last classic album from Burning Spear, begins with Marcus Children Suffer its a festival of insane vocal sounds, all happening simultaneously with the shrugging acceptance of the main lyrical plot, which deals with how Garvey's followers can continue in a world without him. You can keep your Screamin' Jay Hawkins and Captain Beefheart and other "avant-garde" vocalists -- what Rodney does here is to create not just strange sounds with his mouth (including something that sounds like he really needs to see a gastroenterologist), but to put those sounds in context. It is the weirdest moment in a record that still stands as one of reggae's weirdest moments.

Every track here ends up going where you don't think it could go. There is no way to predict the chord structure of the song Social Living, because it changes virtually every two measures, and never where you think it will go. This is exacerbated by the chorus, which repeats Do you know / Social living is the best six times and then launches into the verses before you're ready, and intensified by the clattering percussion. It's an experimental song structure of the first water, using as many of reggae's conventions as it breaks, even dubbing out at the end, which isn't even three minutes later.

Not all these tracks are as bizarre as these two, but although many of them are pretty, none of them are easy to take. Institution is about as straight-ahead as things get, and it's still so heavy with conga rolls and funk-rock guitar and smooth swinging horns that it sounds like doom and love together. Civilize Reggae begins with some swirling synthesizer noise that never quite goes away when the beat begins, which is good because the beat is too oppressively hard to survive without something on top. When Rodney and his 47 echoes start listing the different places on earth that do the reggae, and the baritone saxophone starts honking away, it's like the strange heaven that you always hoped was out there somewhere. (I'm not going to spoil the surprise ending of this track, which is the most perfect moment in reggae music history. Yes, you can quote me.)

This is a concept album, as you might expect on a record containing four different songs that have either Marcus or Garvey in their titles, but that's not the concept. To me, this record is all about Winston Rodney trying to find the ghost in the Kingston machine, to locate in his music the ephemeral qualities that he intones at the beginning of Mister Garvey: Light! Strength! Energy! The fact that this song makes Marcus Garvey sound like a stone-cold pimp ("So cool / So smooth / No fool") has something to do with it, but not all; the fact that "Nayah Keith" is an old nyahbinghi-riddimed Rasta hymn tricked out in new garb, but it's still just as primal as it ever was, the ancient in new garb, the triumph of Winston Rodney's vision. And better than anything Bob Marley ever did.

1. Marcus Children
2. Social Living
3. Nayah Keith
4. Institution 12 inch mix
5. Marcus Senior 12 inch mix
6. Civilised Reggae 12 inch mix
7. Mister Garvey 12 inch mix
8. Come
9. Marcus Say Jah No Dead
10. Institution Version 12 inch mix
11. Social Living 12 inch mix