Mister Bump UK

First Love

This is my response to this week’s Flashback Track Friday prompt, where we were challenged to:

Tell us a genre of music that you love.

I can tolerate most music. I don’t much like country, rap or showtunes. I can’t stand heavy rock such as metal.

Country feels doleful. But I do like Irish music a lot, which is musically similar but feels so much more upbeat.

Growing up in Liverpool, there is a big Beatles connection. Although I was twenty years behind them, I always liked their group music and George’s solo work. Including projects like Wilburys. Not so much the others.

I mentioned soul yesterday. I tend to like a lot of black music – that’s just how the cards were dealt. Not so much jazz, though love Satch. Motown crowns it off, and Marvin sits on the throne. That stable produced so much talent. Smokey Robinson wrote so much good material, then there was Stevie Wonder, Diana Ross, etc.

Without doubt, though, when the doctor puts a stethoscope to my chest, they hear reggae. And a lot was political. Rastas were outcasts in Jamaica and the music was a way of delivering a payload.

I’m all for that. Make people think. Music makes us smile, tap our feet, but underpinning everything there is the serious business of life.

I’m impressed that (this style of reggae is called “Roots”) reggae spotlights race issues, but I think it’s pretty woeful in other areas. Gender, say. There was a trend, not dissimilar to rap, where guys would sing about how big their dick was, or how many children they’d fathered… I stopped listening to contemporary reggae at that point. There’s no point being a father if you’re not gonna be one…

Anyway, here’s an example. Good tune with spot-on payload. If you are a big tree, we are asmall axe, and we’re coming to cut you down. What a message! Fires me up, every time.

This is Ziggy Marley, Bob’s son.

16 comments

  1. I have swings and roundabouts with music. I love Bruce Springsteen and Imagine Dragons, but I’m also a huge fan of Tommy Emmanuel.

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    • Okay, I’ve heard of Springsteen. Like Philadelphia – I featured that one week – but otherwise meh. Will need to add those two others to my list.
      Must admit, though, I’ve kept broadly the same tastes in music since my teens. It’s been added to over the years, but not much removed. I suppose I bought Gloria Estefan as a twenty, have not listened to her for years.

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  2. I like Bob Marley, some of it. Wasn’t aware that his son is followed the tradition. I’m a fan of Lady Black Mambazo after Paul Simon featured them on Graceland. One of my favourites is this one “Homeless”

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    • I know them. I love the SA sound. I follow some SA blogs and when they post music, it’s a treat.

      Bob Marley, btw, had 11 children, although some were adopted. By three women, I think. He might have been a superb family man who made that scenario work, but it would have been good, if he’d lived, to hear him sing on the merits of gender equality.

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