Coping with the large shadow cast by his father's legacy was difficult, Damian Marley tells Jim Carroll, but he is finally getting used to being the new face of reggae
It's the most famous name in reggae and that's something which is never going to change. No matter what any new young gun from Jamaica achieves, he or she is really just walking in the footsteps of Bob Marley. He may have died in 1981, but Marley's music still sells and his influence has never wavered. Year in and year out, it's his songs reggae fans sing and hear on the radio.
You have to feel a little sympathy, then, for Marley's children. Seven of his nine kids are musicians and all have released albums, toured and generally tried to do their own thing. None, though, have been able to step out of Marley's shadow or escape damning comparisons with his legacy.
Last year's Welcome to Jamrock album may change all that. It's Damian "Jr Gong" Marley's third album, but it's the first one which has really caught fire. You don't have to look further than the title track to realise there's another Marley voice coming through.
Blending digi-reggae, righteous roots, dancehall rhythms and hip-hop smarts, the album is a rich, vibrant and modern selection of reggae protest songs. As such, it's a perfect fit both for the yards back in Kingston and a global audience keen to hear a new Marley on the rise.
The album was one of 2005's unexpected highs and enabled Marley to really take his show on the road. The tour, which has already included support slots with U2, arrives in Dublin next Tuesday.
Marley Jr knows that his surname has opened doors for him. "Of course, people check me out because I'm a Marley, it's good for me. But I express myself how I want to, not how my father would have done. My style is different so I get less comparisons to my father than maybe Ziggy or Julian [his brothers] do."
HE WAS JUST three years of age when his father died, so he was reared by his mother (Cindy Breakspeare, a former Miss World) and step-father. But it was impossible for him to escape his father when he was growing up.
"Jamaica is a small place so everybody knows everybody in a certain way", he explains. "My mother wanted me to do the school thing first and everything else after that, so it wasn't until I got older that people started to know who I was. That's when I really became aware of the whole Marley thing." Yet Marley knows now that his father's influence was always there. "Yes, even when I was young, I knew things were different", he says. "You just know, you hear certain things. There wasn't one event or occasion when I realised that it was a big deal. But when you tell people who you are, you see the reaction. I soon figured out there was something special about it." It took him somewhat longer to figure out how to make his own musical mark.
When Marley talks about his first two albums, he says that "practice makes perfect". He had to get 2001's Half Way Tree and 2000's Mr Marley out of the way first to get where he is now. "Those albums were building blocks. I had to go through the whole writing, recording and releasing things and learn about the whole process and then you have things to put back into the next project you do."
What's remarkable about Welcome to Jamrock is just how coherently Marley has mixed sounds and styles, although he feels this is nothing new. "I always tried to borrow from other genres on the other albums, but I suppose this is where it comes out right. I know it's the right thing to. I listen to a lot of different types of music, so it's natural that I'll make music I like to listen to."
Yet, even with star turns from rappers like Nas and Black Thought, Marley's album always comes back to its reggae roots. He sees this in the lyrics ("that's what reggae music is about, that voice against oppression and struggle") and in how the album reflects the music he loved as a youth.
"I grew up listening to dancehall so you have that reflected in the album. I love Eek-A-Mouse, so we have a lot of tracks that have that kind of feel, like Welcome to Jamrock. It's there because we love it. We love Shabba Ranks, we love the beats he's done, we love Super Cat and of course we love Bob Marley. We love their music so we're using their flavours."
MARLEY HAS SOME interesting views about the current international standing of reggae. "There needs to be a lot more unity with us," he believes. "There's a lot of us bubbling up near the mainstream, but we need to do things that make big splashes for reggae as a genre.
"Instead of just one artist being powerful each year, a lot of us have to become powerful. We will then be able to show that reggae music is worth investing in by big companies, radio stations, promoters, everyone." For him, this step requires more collaborations. After all, he's worked with Nas, Eve and Bobby Brown and it's worked out very well. "Collaborations are definitely the way forward. It's definitely a way of exposing the music.
"When people come in and do collaborations with our artists in Jamaica, word gets out about the new talent coming through." But it's also about reggae acts themselves getting their act together. "Lots of us are penny-wise and pound-foolish," says Marley, beginning to sound a little like his dad. "We're all about the here and now, when we should be doing things that are long-term and that will actually build us to the next level. We need a couple of us to start thinking that way.
"People have to take control of their own lives. There is a revolution going on already. But it's a mental revolution in terms of how we think and how we take our destiny into our own hands." Maybe reggae needs another Marley to lead the way. Would he be up for the job? "It's not really just about me", he says quickly. "For a start, I didn't make the record on my own, there are other people involved.
"But me taking a lead? I'm just part of a team and I suppose I have just hit a home run with this album. My challenge is to do it again and again and keep those home runs coming."
Damian Marley plays the Olympia, Dublin, on Feb 28