Bob Marley Concert

It’s Friday, February 23, 2007 and my roommates are convincing me that I should attend the Damian Marley concert with them at the Stephen C. O'Connell Center. The only thing I know about this man is that he is the son of Bob Marley. I don't even know his type of music. As my friends tell me I will enjoy this concert I think to myself "is this type of music even me? “Am I really going to enjoy this type of music? So I decide that I'll attend the concert with my friends. When we arrive I see Damian Marley and his band on stage with long haired dreads. I'm already thinking to myself this must be reggae music. As I tended to keep watching the concert tons of people are waving their lighters in the air, many are singing, and about the whole crowd had glow sticks. On stage there were so many different colored lights. Basically any color you could think of. All of which were shining in all different directions. Since we had decided last minute to go to the concert, we didn’t have very good seats. So we decided we’d walk around. As we walked around, I got to see how people reacted to this kind of music. People were really enthused about this concert. This was something totally different for me to experience. I listen to Rock music, which rock is a form of popular music with a prominent vocal melody accompanied by a guitar, drums, and often bass. Many styles of rock music also use keyboard instruments. Rock music usually has a strong back beat, and usually revolves around the electric guitar. But with Reggae it’s a more rhythmic style with regular chops on the back beat known as the skank. Reggae song lyrics deal with many subjects, including faith, love, sexuality and broad social issues. Damian Marley had carried on the tradition set by his father, Bob Marley, by singing about real life issues and problems with socially conscious lyrics that reached out to a new generation.

The purpose of the concert was to perform the Jamaican culture through music with life issues and problems. Even though most of the lyrics in the songs were muffled and hard to understand because of the singing style you can get a sense of what he was talking about by the way the crowd would react to certain statements and even the way Damian would kind of laugh or stop and say how he really meant what he was saying in a regular speaking tone right in the middle of a song. After listening to his songs it was obvious that he was speaking on current events here in America and also in his homeland of Jamaica. I thought it was a cool way to speak on these issues even though 99 percent of all genres of music is focused on current events. Just the way he sang was unique, it was as if he was just speaking regularly with just a hint of melody in his voice, and of course, all the drums and acoustic guitar in the background provided a light relaxing almost hypnotizing experience. All his songs were centered on different ideas and topics, each song had its own problem that he addressed. There were also many songs just simply about partying and having a good time, however, these were easily identified as the minor issues of Damian’s lyrics. It was very easy to understand that his main concerns were the way people treat each other today. Children killing each other because of gang violence and police abusing there power for just about anything, these sorts of subjects is what Damian wanted to get out to the public and try to get his listeners to act on these “atrocities”. Although the music was different than what I was used to it was really easy to like because of its relaxing sound and also because the entire crowd was really into it so it was hard not to enjoy the event.

I think that not only through this concert but through all of Damian Marley’s music, he defiantly accomplishes his goals in getting his message out to people all over the world. From a stereotypical point of view, most of his listeners wouldn’t care about the lyrics as long as they sound mellow and relaxing while getting high. But after going to the concert and seeing all the different people that attended, like me, I saw that most people seemed to be smart people just going to a concert that has more meaning than the music itself. Still, this could be because it was on the campus of a very high academic university, but I like to think that it would have the same turn out anywhere. The concert defiantly made me listen to what he had to say, regardless of his style of music. Everything about that concert was completely different than what I am used to but it didn’t change anything and it actually made me more aware of what he was saying and the way people were reacting to him. A lot of what he said in his songs was straight forward. He didn’t beat around the bush at with what he wanted to say, there were no symbolic meanings in his lyrics but, there were metaphors here and there which is always the case when dealing with music. It didn’t seem to me that he wanted to cloud up his message to people with that, he would easily just speak what was on his mind and what needed to change in