Damian Marley on Reggae
Dub in Colorado, Hip-Hop Collaboration, and Digital Instruments
In early 2006 Damian Marley offered insight into hip-hop collaborations, digital instruments, and the Miami Symphonic Strings on his hit album "Welcome to Jamrock."
Why did you choose to play the Winter X Games in Aspen?
Well, me know that the demographic of the X games is very important to us. You know, it's very youthful, very adventurous, and fans of the X Games I think will appreciate our music, likewise athletes. So we're trying to make a connection.
Have you been to Aspen before?
Yeah, I've been to Aspen a few times.
Do you find Colorado to be a good place to play reggae?
Yeah, it is, actually. I tell you, there's a couple spots we go basically on every tour, and it's pretty energetic.
Do you ski or snowboard?
No.
Other than the revamping of your father's stuff, there's some pretty extensive sampling on "Welcome to Jamrock." Bunny Wailer, Ini Kamoze, the Skatalites, Ella Fitzgerald, a little Irving Berlin number. Do you find it's easier to make a rap song from old hooks, or is dub reggae just as craftable?
Well... it's the same. Really, the same. Like I always say, music is not a conscious thing, that we do too much thinking about or overthink, just what sounds good to us, whatever sounds good to my ear. It's not really difficult.
On this album, there's a lot of collaborations. What it was like to work with a rapper like Blackthought whose music with the Roots has not seemed so overtly influenced by reggae?
Blackthought is somebody who... I'm a fan of his music. I didn't have a chance to work with him face to face, but I worked with him before, on the "Chant Down Babylon" album, that collaboration album that we did of my father's music. I'm a fan of his music, really check what he stands for lyrically, so that's really the reason I reach out to him.
Did he join you in Jamaica to create the track you did together?
Actually, he joined us in Miami to create that track.
How about the Miami symphonic strings, what was the collaborative process like with them?
That was great. We had some strings that we played with keyboards, but wanted to have that live strings sound, that big orchestra sound, so we had a company write out the music, the sheet paper for them to read, and went to the studio and did it, so that was great, because live instruments, live strings is a great experience.
Since you've proven the fusion with hip-hop so well, are there going to be a few songs that return to roots reggae, acoustic guitar, hand drums, live horns, stuff like that, or are you and reggae in general moving towards the synthesized digital stuff?
No, I mean, reggae is going in all kinds of areas, you know, variety is the spice of life, so you have some songs that do that digitally and some songs that don't, just like you're saying there are some songs on this record where you can hear that. For example, all the instruments on the song "There for You" are completely live, there's no digital instruments on that track. Meanwhile you have a song like "Khaki suit" that is a lot of digital things, or maybe the remake of Exodus that we call Move has some digital stuff, so we have a mixture these things available to us in terms of technology, to use in production of our music, so why not? Experiment, you know?
