Now let's delve a little deeper into some roots Rasta...
"...and if we should live up in the hills."
From Matt Cibula at popmatters.com:
Burning Spear was a group, one of the most intriguing and heavy of Jamaican ensembles, and they released one of the best-known reggae albums ever, 1975's Marcus Garvey. This righteous blast at Babylon, produced by the legendary Jack Ruby, gets mentioned on a lot of "best album" lists, but no one ever mentions anything else they have done since then. And that, as the re-release of these three albums proves, is a huge oversight. One disc combines 1976's Ruby-produced Man in the Hills with their first self-produced album, Dry and Heavy from 1977, and the other presents Social Living from 1980, along with two extended dub mixes. Taken together, these three records prove quite a few things, including the revelation that some of those "best reggae album" lists need to be reordered to include some more Burning Spear.
The biggest misconception about this group is to equate Winston Rodney with Burning Spear. He did, in fact, become Burning Spear, but not on Man in the Hills. Here, the ghostly harmonies of bandmates Rupert Willington and Delroy Hines are absolutely central to the heavy roots attack; this is clear on the opening title track, where their chant of "And if we should live up in the hills" makes everything sweet and creepy and lovely all at the same time. But Rodney's vocal work is always sad and hopeful at the same time, yearning and patient, mournful and smiling -- his voice is a superb instrument, and he knows it: he'll repeat a line over and over in weird ways, or allow a track to shamble to a start before tying it together with the first line of a song, and reggae just hadn't heard anything like him, and there certainly haven't been a lot of singers since who even wanted to try what he effortlessly accomplishes here.
Black self-reliance is clearly the theme of this album. The good in "It's Good" is "It is good when a man can think for himself"; the children in "Children" are learning to fish even though the current is so strong and the sea so rocky; the mother in "Mother" tells Rodney, "Son, be careful / Think before you move". And the people in "People Get Ready" are being addressed by Rodney, who is speaking simultaneously as himself and Marcus Garvey and Haile Selassie: "Come, people / I wouldn't leave my people behind / No I wouldn't leave them behind / I couldn't do that".
This is all intoned in Rodney's ageless pleading tenor, with Willington and Hines there to push the call-and-response vocal lines past what had ever been done in reggae before, with heavy African repetition on "Lion" and "It's Good," and a very James Brown and the Famous Flames vibe on "People Get Ready." But it is the woozy and wild psychedelic intricacy of the backing tracks that really sends these songs over the top. "No More War" pulls in Shaft guitar scratches and blues lines from Earl "Chinna" Smith and Tony Chin, making it all sound like the Stax Reggae Song that never was. The push and pull of "Door Peep" is so thick that one four-note trombone phrase (by the amazing Vincent "Trommie" Gordon) sound like the scowl of fate, and "Groovy" contains one hell of a sick funky rhythm track thanks to the ministrations of Leroy "Horsemouth" Wallace while the bass boomage of either Robbie Shakespeare or Aston "Family Man" Barrett. (David Katz's liner notes are, as always, great on the big picture and just so-so on the song by song details.)
Technical Information:
Artist: Burning Spear
Album: Man in the Hills
Year: 1976/1990
Audio Codec(s): APE/FLAC
Encoding: Lossless
Rip: EAC APE + .cue/FLAC split tracks
Avg. bitrate: 786 kb/s
Sample rate: 44100 Hz
Bits per sample: 16
Channels: 2
File size: 194 MB/199 MB
Length: 0:34:36
Personnel:
Winston Rodney: vocals, percussion
Earl "Chinna" Smith: guitar
Donald Kinsley: guitar
Bertram McLean: guitar
Herman Marquis: alto saxophone
Richard Hall: tenor saxophone
Bobby Ellis: trumpet
Robbie Barrett: bass
Leroy Wallace: drums
Tracklisting:
01. Man In The Hills (4:05)
02. It's Good (2:48)
03. No More War (3:23)
04. Black Soul (3:29)
05. Lion (3:15)
06. People Get Ready (3:26)
07. Children (3:48)
08. Mother (3:41)
09. Door Peep (2:43)
10. Groovy (3:57)
Man in the Hills Megaupload Links:
APE (img + .cue)
FLAC (split tracks)