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FILE
Damian 'Junior Gong' Marley performs at 'Welcome to Jamrock', held at Cinema 2, New Kingston, in December.
Tanya Batson-Savage, Freelance Writer
The day has long passed when a young, frizzy, curly haired boy announced to the world "a me name Junior Gong, a telling you/ the youngest
veteran". At the time, it seemed that little more than genetics had earned him that title.
That boy seems to have very
little in common with the militant looking Rasta man who looks down his nose from the Welcome to Jamrock album cover. He is decked in an army green, military cut shirt, while a camouflage headband keeps back his locks, which are now snaking (unseen) toward his knees.
The album cover suggests that Damian 'Junior Gong' Marley has gone more hardcore than the Grammy winning Half-Way Tree album. Now, there is no attempt to play up his boyish good looks, and rather than a pristine looking clock and a red couch suggesting relaxation, he is surrounded by the trademark zinc fences of the ghetto.
Junior Gong is among the five nominees for this year's Best Reggae Album in the 2006 Grammy Awards, which will take place on February 8. Like Sean Paul with Trinity, Shaggy with Clothes Drop and Burning Spear with Our Music, if Gong wins it will be his second time to have copped the award.
first Grammy
Gong earned his first Grammy in 2001 with Half-Way Tree. Sean Paul rocked home with the 2004 reggae Grammy with his partying take on the Jamrock, Dutty Rock. Burning Spear earned the award for 1999's Calling Rastafari while Shaggy's Boombastic got him Grammy credentials in 1995. Third World, with Black Gold and Green, is the only act that is up for their first Grammy.
It would be easy to suggest that for a Marley, with Bob Marley having been made a synonym for reggae, this ought to be no problem. It seems to be the case, as Ziggy Marley and the Melody Makers earned three Grammy awards for Fallen is Babylon (1997), One Bright Day (1989) and Conscious Party (1988). But that is as a group.
As such, Junior Gong would be the first Marley to cop the Grammy Award as a solo act twice. Actually, he is already the sole Marley to cop the award as a solo act. Welcome to Jamrock is already on its way to making records, starting with its number 7 debut on the Billboard top 200 Album Charts, a first for a reggae album, having sold over 85,000 units. However, not long after he was outdone by Sean Paul, whose Trinity sold 107,000 copies.
The title track Welcome to Jamrock is a hard-hitting take on life on the Jamaican streets, at least for those who live in addresses where corrugated zinc is more plentiful than greenery. It is interesting that while his father's One Love has been co-opted to turn Jamaica into a tourism capital, Welcome to Jamrock declares in an insightfully witty line, "Sandals a nuh Backto".
It is for this reason that some conservatives accuse Junior Gong of veering away from the memory of the original Gong. But actually, the son has more in common with the DJs of today and the lyrics have a revolutionary potency that makes him a lyrical heir, not just a genetic one.
The album displays some lyrical growth over Half-Way Tree, though Gong remains a little too condemning of loose women and retains a strangely obsessive hatred of jherri curls. Nonetheless, the album gives no reason for one to appreciate the skip button, though with songs like the title single, Road to Zion and The Master Has Come (with the extremely witty line "before Bogle start dance/ and still deh pon paper money") one might well wear out the replay button.
Welcome to Jamrock is
produced by Junior Gong and executive produced by his elder sibling Stephen Marley and released by Universal/Tuff Gong.
