Gavin B.

I have an unlimited download music service, so I downloaded Chant Down Babylon and can give you instant feedback on my first listening.

I liked the twangy guitar riff that opens Concrete Jungle and recurs throughout the song. It reminds me guitar playing on Morricone's spaghetti western soundtracks and John Barry's old 007 movie soundtracks. It's a song that would work well on my song lists or my radio show song rotation. I also like Rakim's vocal and rap. He's always been my favorite old school rapper.

No More Trouble works because Erika Badu has a feel for the music. I like how she added the chorus from 'Dem Belly Full but in the long run I'd rather just hear Erika sing a cover of the song that doesn't compete with the Marley vocal. I've never been a big fan of ex post facto overdubbed duets with the original artist. It seems contrived.

I'm not sure if any of the other cuts do anything more than add a drum machine, a rap track, some turntable moves and alter the tempo of Bob's songs. The shuffle tempo of the drum machine overpowers the magnificent vocal and playing of the Wailers on Jamming. I found that cut in particular as being migraine inducing. MC Lyte is a great rapper but it's bad choice of material for her.

The voice over segues between songs were annoying. The artistic attitude of the recording gave me the feeling that the album is not so much a tribute to Marley's reggae as a misguided attempt to reshape reggae to fit a hip-hop template.

I'm not saying that folks who like that sort of thing are lame but it's not my own cup of musical tea. Genre crossover and fusion music often dilute the power of the original source and end up reshaping distinctly original forms of music into one big mutated gene pool of mediocre but commerically viable music. I'm not a musical purist but the legacy of our musical past is just as important to me, as the past and present tense of our music folkways...maybe even more so.

The greatest singing stylists keep the focus on the interpretation of the song itself and rarely add vocal pyrotechnics or other musical distractions to draw attention away from the lyrics and music of the song. Celine Dion is a horrible song stylist because she takes the attention off the beauty of the song by using her multi-octave voice to pummel the song into a homogenized pulp. Celine might as well be singing the same song over and over for her insufferable lack of interpretive imagination. She knows nothing of lyrical phrasing, timing, vocal dynamics or those indefinable qualities of soul and passion.

I got a similar feeling about some of the performances on Chant Down Babylon. It takes more than vocal talent to interpret reggae music in a convincing and authentic manner. It's hard to praise the glory of Rastafari if you don't know Rasta.

Bob Marley had thin and reedy voice but only a fool would attempt to surpass the heartfelt soul and passion he breathed into his songs. Not even Marley's longtime bandmate Bunny Wailer, who had a far better singing voice than Bob, could add any new dimensions to Bob's original interpretation of his own songs.

The Chant Down Babylon album isn't technically sampling because the original musical base is left intact, but that turns out to be more problematic, since the resulting vocal and instrumental overdubs are awkwardly meshed with the originals. It struck me as an act of musical revisionism in the name of making Marley's music relevant, but the universal truths of Bob's music are timeless.

I'm not disrespecting your musical taste but one of the reasons why I listen to old school reggae music is because it's not hip-hop. Old school roots reggae music is free of all the bling-bling, flash, attitude, sexual posturing and vulgar values of contemporary hip hop.

I dislike the direction that both reggae music and hip hop have taken over the past twenty years. Both reggae and hip hop began as consciousness music and an outcry against the establishment by the powerless. Now reggae and hip hop are all about sexual boasting, celebrity, cash money and coke consumption. I wish reggae and hip hop would stop celebrating the vacuousness of the livin' large and get back on the roots and consciousness track

Bob Marley never revelled in his wealth, his celebrity status his drug use or his sexual conquests because his Rastafarian faith keep him true to his life long mission of one love and freedom. I've visited his humble sparsely furnished home on Hope Road in Kingston and the man simply didn't care about the allure of the material world.