Album revives legendary Bob Marley! Check it out!

The recordings on the album Trenchtown Days: Birth of a Legend show how the music of Bob Marley and The Wailers evolved along with the sense of independence of a new country, Jamaica.

São Paulo - Singing like a dance-hall crooner, with short hair and an impeccable little suit, swamp-jumping pants and the pose of Sammy Davis Jr., there stands the legendary Robert Nesta Marley, emperor of reggae. The recordings on the album Trenchtown Days: Birth of a Legend (Sony Music) show how the music of Bob Marley and The Wailers evolved along with the sense of independence of a new country, Jamaica, which became independent from Great Britain in 1962.

The double album Trenchtown Days is reggae beginning to escape the trap of acculturation, affirming its roots against a civilizational notion of musical performance and business. It was released on vinyl in the United States in 1977 and reissued last year on CD by the Reggae Spirit Series, a division of Legacy Recordings, a Sony Music division. There are 20 tracks that show the rare harmonic alchemy between three young idols of Jamaican reggae: Bob Marley, Peter Tosh and Bunny Wailer. Recorded between 1963 and 1966, it carries for the first time some of the great classics of the reggae repertoire that Marley would take to internationalization in the years that followed, such as One Love.

Peter Tosh met Bob Marley and Bunny Wailer through his guitar teacher, Joe Higgs. They formed The Wailing Wailers in 1962, inviting Junior Braithwaithe and backing singers Beverly Kelso and Cherry Smith. The group's first success was a primitive ska, Simmer Down, a classic revisited year after year (also present on this album). In 1965, Braithwaithe, Kelso and Cherry Smith left the group. Recorded at Dodd's Studio One in the early
60s, the album is regarded by some fans merely as a reincarnation of the album Birth of a Legend, originally released in 1976 by the Calla label and reposted in stores tirelessly over the years. But card-carrying fans themselves recognize that the remastering of these original recordings gives exceptional sound quality to Marley's vocal duets and his partners.

Bob Marley would become an international idol in the 70s, with the popular acclaim of hits such as I Shot the Sheriffe and No Woman, no Cry. But he faced that maxim that a prophet is not honored in his own country. Until then, he had relative success in his country, having made a series of modest recordings with producer Clement Sir Coxsone Dodd.

In those early days, he was not yet the political animal he would become next. The style is serene, melodious, mixing ska and soul music, doo-wop in the 50s mold and some dose of cool guitars, punctuated by discreet horns. Like a domesticated 50s crooner, he does very well. The vocal trio sounds almost like a Hollywood soundtrack on songs such as Donna, It Hurts to Be Alone, Do You Remember and Dancing Shoes.

One Love, which would become the anthem of the egalitarian battle that Marley's reggae championed, is here in its original version, completely stripped of ideology, as are Let Him Go and others. The dramatic tone of verses such as for the love of God, let him go would only come later. But Trenchtown Days shows that Marley was already subverting classic American dancehall with a musical timing that denied the shortcut of soul music or funk, affirming his own personalized path. The ska beat tinges the colonizing melody with other colors, changing one thing and another. Bob Marley died of cancer on May 11, 1981. In 1999, the last of the original Wailers members, Junior Braithwaithe, one of those present on this double album, was murdered. Recognition of dub (a pioneering remix technique, based on echo effects, that privileges bass and drums) as a pioneering resource of modern music recovered the innovations of this unforgettable team. But it is always good to remember that the one who projected dub and invented scratch was another Jamaican, Lee Perry.