/ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT/MUSIC-JAMAICA: Burning Spear to Favour Studio Over Road

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Howard Campbell

KINGSTON, Nov 27 2001 (IPS) - In the era of multi-platinum recordings and pampered stars, Burning Spear is a throwback to the days when an artist’s reputation depended on their making serious music and touring non-stop.

Few can match the reggae legend in either category. But the singer, who made his name through noted albums like “Marcus Garvey” and “Man In The Hills” and constant touring, says he plans to cut down on his renowned road campaigning in 2002.

“I will still be recording but the touring,” he says, “I and I definitely plan to tone down.”

Spear, whose real name is Winston Rodney, first announced his decision shortly after completing his four-month “Don’t Hurt The Rastaman” tour at Toad’s Place in New Haven, in the U.S. state of Connecticut.

The jaunt started in June at the St. Kitts Jazz Festival then moved over to Europe and North America, where Spear played a combination of festivals, clubs and college dates.

“Next year, I and I plan to concentrate on Europe. There comes a time when you have to retire and do it in style,” Spear says from his Queens, New York City home.

Although he says there are no immediate plans to call it a day, Spear, at 56 years old, admits the pace of touring has become too demanding and he would rather concentrate on the recording aspect of his career.

Spear is already making plans to head for Jamaica to record a new album, the follow-up to “Calling Rastafari”, the set that won the 2000 Grammy Award for Best Reggae Album. Most of his albums, including “Marcus Garvey” and “Man In The Hills”, were recorded in Ocho Rios, a few miles from his hometown of St. Ann’s Bay.

As potent as his message-oriented albums have been, touring has been Burning Spear’s hallmark since the mid-1970s, when Chris Blackwell’s Island Records launched “Marcus Garvey” and “Man In The Hills”.

Michael Horne, a southern California agent who has booked Spear for 18 years in that part of the U.S. state, says Spear has grown in stature since the early 1980s and his fan base transcends race and age.

“His audience has changed from a primarily roots one of reggae purists and now includes a generation of surfers and young Latinos,” Horne says. “He is revered as one of the true roots- reggae pioneers.”

According to Horne, Spear and other reggae acts like Culture and Israel Vibration attract a much bigger crowd than middle-of-the- road reggae performers like deejay Beenie Man and British singer Maxi Priest.

It should come as no surprise that Spear has chosen Europe as the place where he will concentrate his live dates next year. The continent has traditionally been receptive to roots-reggae acts, many of which have long been forgotten in Jamaica.

Like most of these performers, Burning Spear got his start in the music business in the late 1960s when Jamaican music was evolving from the party sound of rock steady to the revolutionary beat of reggae.

He hails from St. Ann, a lush parish in eastern Jamaica that is also the birthplace of Bob Marley and Pan-Africanist Marcus Garvey. Spear was encouraged by Marley to try his luck at the Kingston studio of producer Clement Dodd’s Studio One, where many artists including Marley, came to prominence.

Spear took Marley’s advice and ended up recording two albums for Dodd in 1968 and 1970: a self-titled debut and “Rocking Time”, both of which were well received. His hard-hitting message was a departure from the dance music Studio One was known for, and immediately hit a note with the underground.

He would not record again until 1975, when he teamed up with Ocho Rios-based producer Jack Ruby and released “Marcus Garvey”, which paid homage to Garvey – who is much neglected here – and summed up the militant mood in Jamaica at the time.

The songs from that album, such as the title track and “Days Of Slavery”, are reggae classics and are still very much in demand from die-hard and younger fans at Burning Spear shows. After 2002, they may well have to get used to listening to them on CD or record.

/ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT/MUSIC-JAMAICA: Burning Spear to Favour Studio Over Road

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Howard Campbell

KINGSTON, Nov 27 2001 (IPS) - In the era of multi-platinum recordings and pampered stars, Burning Spear is a throwback to the days when an artist’s reputation depended on their making serious music and touring non-stop.
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