A confession: I don’t like reviewing religious music. Even when
\nI was a practicing Catholic, I didn’t like much religious music,
\nbecause I found it to be too preachy. (I did, however, make an
\nexception for Stryper in my headbanging days; that’s a group we
\nneed to dust off for review someday. So it might not be surprising
\nthat I’ve been sitting on a disc like
\nReggae Redemption Songs<\/i> for over a year, delaying listening
\nto it as long as I could. But the longer I delayed, the more I had
\nto explain to myself that reggae, at its core, was pretty much a
\nreligious form of music, even if it was celebrating Rastifarianism
\nand not Christianity.<\/p>\n
The collection of artists who bang out these 17 songs are indeed
\nable to strike a solid balance between their strong religious views
\nand keeping a secular side of musical entertainment open to the
\nlistener. Yet no matter how good the performance might be, this
\ndisc remains one that is tough to get through in one sitting.<\/p>\n
What is interesting is that I can’t quite pin down why this is
\nthe case. It certainly is not the fault of the musicians here;
\nartists like Neil Evans, Felicia Marion, Ben Okafor and Christifari
\n(featuring Geneman) all show that the sphere of reggae music didn’t
\nstop in 1981 with Bob Marley’s death. (Maybe this was a second
\nreason I held off on reviewing this disc; I freely admit there is a
\nlot about reggae I don’t know.)<\/p>\n
Maybe what makes
\nReggae Redemption Songs<\/i> a little tough to swallow in one
\ngulp is that there isn’t a lot of flexibility with the music.
\nTempo-wise, it often feels like each song could easily blend into
\nthe next. After a while, listening to the disc almost feels like
\nrunning a marathon. I really can’t see blaming the artists; rather,
\nthe compilation producers could have done a little more to inject
\nsome life into this set as it was needed.<\/p>\n
If anything, the strength of
\nReggae Redemption Songs<\/i> might well lie in individual
\nperformances. If you take this CD one song at a time, then works
\nlike those of Okafor (“Man Of Sorrows,” “Wise Ones”), Heaven Bound
\n(“Fisherman”), Evans (“Not My Desire”) and Marion (“The Rock,”
\n“Drink”) showcase the power that reggae music really has, and how
\nit can win over even the most stubborn ears.<\/p>\n
To everyone’s credit, the religious messages of these songs
\nrarely, if ever, gets to the point of being a miniature sermon. It
\nis only in the liner notes when it goes into overkill mode – but,
\nin a sense, I can’t fault them for doing even this. After all,
\nchances are you’re not picking this one up simply because the store
\nwas out of Slayer CDs.<\/p>\n
The only times where this disc became a little hard to bear
\n(besides having to take the occasional break to re-charge my
\nmusical batteries) were the two “dub” tracks – and even there,
\nHeaven Bound’s disc-closer “Dub Sur Mer” was somewhat interesting.
\nThis was what a good dub track could do: lay out the groove, and
\nget out of the way before its welcome was worn out. If only the
\nsame could have been said for Solomon Jabby’s “Iesous Dub
\nInternational”.<\/p>\n
\nReggae Redemption Songs<\/i> is a surprisingly good compilation
\ndisc which should introduce many people to some reggae artists who
\nare deserving of the attention. The fact that they are using music
\nto preach the word of God almost becomes second in command with
\nthis group – and that, quite frankly, works to their favor.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":26499,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"tags":[],"artist":[5827],"rating":[5617],"class_list":["post-37736","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-various-artists","rating-rating-b-plus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/37736","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37736"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/37736\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26499"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37736"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37736"},{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=37736"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=37736"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}