Mixing up the Marley sound

THE international audience at Jamaica’s annual Reggae Sumfest -- the weeklong summer festival considered the creme de la creme of reggae shows -- is a handy public opinion poll. The popularity of an artist is commensurate with the number of lighters raised during his or her performance. And at this year’s show, one artist sparked fire like no other.

Granted, that artist had the benefit of a noteworthy name: Damian Robert Nesta Marley, the youngest of Bob’s sons. (He’s even known as “Jr. Gong,” after Bob’s moniker, “Tuff Gong.”) But pedigree seemed beside the point during Marley’s performance; it was a particular song that had ears rapt and lighters raised.

The number is “Welcome to Jamrock”: a fierce, intensely haunting track in which Marley, 27, chats about poverty and crime in “Jamrock” -- not the irie island paradise but the semi-apocalyptic ghetto of real-life Jamaica, where an escalating murder rate is on everyone’s mind. Its reception at Sumfest was unsurprising, because for months, the track had galvanized Jamaica, conquering charts and achieving anthem status.

Marley’s single has even made its way to American shores, where it has moved onto the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart after spending more than three months on top of the New York reggae chart -- and breaking a record set more than two decades ago by none other than Bob Marley’s “Could You Be Loved.”

The song’s success suggests that although Damian Marley’s first two albums made him a bona fide reggae star, his third, “Welcome to Jamrock,” due in stores Tuesday, could propel the Kingston-born artist to even wider recognition.

A triumphant follow-up to his Grammy-winning “Halfway Tree,” the album is a rousing merger of genres and eras in which dancehall and roots reggae are not just happy bedfellows but two sides of the same coin.

His best tracks ingeniously fuse the two styles. On “Move!,” his father’s “Exodus” is repackaged for the hip-hop generation: The chorus samples the original song while the verses find Damian Marley toasting, dancehall style, about migration and the “survival of Jah people.”

Elsewhere ‘80s-era samples create throwbacks to the early days of dancehall, when cool electronic rhythms were backdrops for blistering patois vocals.

Marley also flashes a sense of humor that prevents his socially conscious lyrics from crossing the line into preachy or tedious. On “Hey Girl,” he describes his “gang of Jamaican Al Pacinos, drinking Blue Mountain cappuccinos.”

Marley can afford to lighten up: He’s made one of the year’s best albums, a stirring homage to reggae’s past that’s deeply, dazzlingly lodged in the present.

Seated in a New York hotel room weeks after the Sumfest show, the singer suggested why “Jamrock” hit a chord.

“The song is a global thing -- it’s not just about Jamaica,” he said, speaking slowly and softly. “There’s poverty everywhere; there’s ghettos in America. It’s a global thing: The masses are led by the few, and the few are those that are comfortable.”

Marley is excited by the song’s crossover success, for one reason in particular: “Because of the content of ‘Jamrock,’ ” he said, “interviewers are asking me real questions now -- more than just ‘How is it to be your father’s son?’ ”

Many more than one influence

IT’S tough, however, not to ask that question, especially when many of the Marley boys -- Ziggy, Stephen, Ky-mani, Julian -- have released Marleyesque albums and performed their late father’s songs on stages spanning the globe. But for Damian, the anxiety of influence seems doubly vexing, because his style is born of more than just the legacy of his father, who died of cancer in 1981.

“As a kid, I didn’t see myself as an artist like my father,” he explained shyly, fidgeting with a piece of rolling paper and exhibiting the sweet, gentle stare that has made the young bachelor something of a reggae sex symbol. “Dancehall was my thing. I was more seeing myself as a Ninja Man or a Supercat or a Shabba Ranks -- one of those DJs.”

Those DJs -- Jamaican rappers, or “toasters,” who began ruling reggae charts in the late ‘80s -- marked the flourishing of a subgenre that affronted old-school fans and upper-class moralists. Dancehall was deemed slack, or lewd; it was denigrated for eschewing live instrumentation in favor of computerized beats.

But to Damian -- whose influences range from “the whole Marley family” to Bill Withers, Nat King Cole, Snoop Dogg and Ranks -- dancehall was a mouthpiece for his generation, an exciting chapter in the evolution of Jamaican music. “Reggae is growing now as a culture, not just a music, and dancehall is part of reggae culture,” he said.

If any artist is poised to prove that these two styles -- two generations, really -- are of a piece, the youngest and perhaps most impressive of the Marley sons may be the one. His music is a rousing union of two eras: socially conscious dancehall chatting and mild, mournful roots reggae.

This Marley knows that opposites can unite because he was the product of such a union, born to Bob Marley and Cindy Breakspeare, an upper-class Jamaican beauty queen (1976’s Miss World) with whom Bob, married to Rita Marley, had a lasting love affair.

Their only son was 2 years old when Bob died; about memories of his father, Damian said only that he has “none that I prefer to share.”

He does say that he grew up “very grounded” in Kingston, attending elite schools and evading the spotlight. He lived with his mother, his stepfather and two younger siblings on his mother’s side; during holidays, he visited the part of his family with, as he put it, “14 or so” siblings on his father’s side.

Music was hardly his only career option -- Marley dabbled in boxing and architecture -- but it seemed inexorable. “I have pictures of me in Pampers with an electric guitar,” he said. His bedtime ritual consisted of playing his father’s songs on his Fisher-Price turntable and singing along.

With other children of reggae greats -- the son of Third World’s Cat Coore and the daughter of singer Freddie McGregor -- he formed a band, the Shepherds; in 1992 they performed before an audience of thousands at Jamaica’s now-defunct Reggae Sunsplash festival.

But while Marley enjoyed singing sweet cover songs with his band, another style had his heart. His first solo singles, released when he was a teenager, were dancehall tracks, and though neither generated much buzz, Marley recalls a particular performance, at a show honoring Bob Marley’s birthday, that did.

When he took the stage and performed Shabba Ranks’ track “Bedroom Bully,” Marley was roundly attacked by the Jamaican press for tainting his father’s legacy with slackness. He remains unfazed: “We a rebel from a likkle [little] youth,” he said, smiling, in Jamaican patois.

Marley recorded his first album, 1996’s “Mr. Marley,” during his high school years. It found some success on reggae charts, landed him a slot on the 1997 Lollapalooza tour and, most important, marked the beginning of his auspicious studio relationship with older brother Stephen, who wrote and produced the album.

That relationship bore fruit on Damian’s 2001 album “Halfway Tree,” which marked his emergence as a conscious Rastafarian and a voice to be reckoned with. The album -- which won a Grammy in the reggae category -- brought hip-hop into the reggae mix by featuring rappers Eve and Treach.

It showcased the range of Damian’s older-than-its-years voice -- alternately chatting with rapid-fire fury, sweetly serenading his girl, or wistfully lamenting political corruption -- and Stephen’s dig-in-the-crates production style, which has a hip-hop sensibility: He adroitly transforms old-school reggae rhythms into contemporary tracks.

On the new album, the Marley brothers’ teamwork hits its stride. The album’s mood veers from urgent militancy -- one track samples the speeches of Ethiopian emperor Haile Selassie; another has guest rapper Nas rhyming about “Robert Mugabe President Mugabe/ holding guns to innocent bodies in Zimbabwe” -- to sweet, playful and, on a song featuring Bobby Brown, sensual.

“The music of today -- hip-hop, dancehall -- we sample a lot,” said Marley, who, along with the other Marley children, lives in Miami, where the family has had homes for many years. “So why not sample someone who is great and is also” -- he smiles coyly -- “my father?”

Marley again referred to his father as he elaborated on the lyrics of “Welcome to Jamrock.” Inspired by Stephanie Black’s 2001 documentary “Life and Debt,” which employs Jamaica as an example of the perils of globalization, the song paints a vivid picture that has proven, as Marley put it, “too real” for some Jamaican powers that be, who have criticized its harsh portrait of the island.

Growing animated, he cited one such critique. “An article said, ‘Bob Marley sing “One Love” and now him son come and sing “Jamrock.” ’ But ‘One Love’ is not the whole story! Wha’apen to ‘Ambush in the Night’? Wha’apen to ‘Slave Driver’? ‘Burning and Looting’? [Bob] has more songs of revolution than of one love.”

His son, meanwhile, embraces both sentiments, as well as the controversy he’s sparked. “It means people are listening, and it’s provoking thought,” Marley said, “and that is one of the greatest things about reggae music in the first place.”