Pop Music Review : Bob Marley’s Ghost Is Well Served by Ziggy

Both Ziggy Marley and Julian Lennon have been stuck with the unenviable task of establishing their own art while cloaked in their legendary fathers’ ghosts.

While the younger Lennon seems to have stumbled under that burden, Ziggy Marley & the Melody Makers (featuring his siblings Steve and Cedella Marley, plus Sharon Pendergast) did justice to the Bob Marley legacy while delivering their own music with a contemporary vitality on Sunday at Irvine Meadows.

While Ziggy’s controlled stage presence couldn’t be mistaken for the commanding, live-wire immediacy of his dad’s, he nevertheless offered a solid, propulsive set drawn from 1988’s “Conscious Party” and last year’s “One Fine Day” albums. On most songs, an energetic dance pulse was joined with socially conscious lyrics, with the “Tomorrow People” incantation of “If you don’t know your past, don’t know your future” taking on a particular resonance performed to the largely draft-age audience.

Like his father, Marley recited a speech by Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie on injustice and war, and delivered a charged version of Bob’s “Get Up, Stand Up” and a goosebump-inducing encore of the meditative “Redemption Song.”

Opener Eek-a-Mouse’s unique toasting style--part Porky Pig and part tobacco auctioneer--wore too thin in his hourlong set. Brooklyn’s Family Stand offered a strong set of Sly Stone-derived soul and funk. Marley and the Family Stand will be at the Universal Amphitheatre on Friday and the Santa Barbara County Bowl on Saturday.