In Freedom, Itoobaa brings us an uncompromising brand of roots reggae that echos the profoundness of Bob Marley, the mellowness of Gregory Isaac and the edginess of Steel Pulse.
Hinting sometimes at blues, sometimes at jazz, sometimes at funk, and other times at some combination of these, the music stands alone in its uniqueness and is sure to appeal to both reggae and non-reggae lovers.
To hear music like this one may have to go to no other place but Jamaica and to no other time but the era Bob Marley and Peter Tosh reigned supreme.
The album spans the full range of reggae. There is ska, there is roots reggae Bob Marley's style, roots reggae Steel Pulse style, lovers rock Shansez style, funky reggae Third World style, classical British reggae Aswad style. There is even an acoustic composition as in Bob Marley's Redemption Song.
As if all this wasn't enough, Itoobaa teamed up first with hiphop artiste, Gladstone Joseph, and then with dub artiste, Allen Augustin, to bring us two compositions of great power, urgency and contemporary feel.
The gospel that Itoobaa shares with us is no less encompassing. There are meditations on love and happiness; prophetic admonitions of living right, living in harmony with man and nature, and the punishment that awaits the wicked; there are songs of celebration and rejoicing; songs of love, thanks and praise; songs of freedom, emancipation, and redemption. No matter the message or musical arrangement, Itoobaa's deep, untamed, uncompromised, throaty voice comes out as clear as a prophet's and his message is no less infectious.
Like any good art, the more one listens to the music, the better it sounds, the deeper it gets. No two songs on the track are alike. Each song is a world within a world, and once you enter one world you have no desire to leave. Freedom features Monty Maxwell at his best. His jazz, blues, and rock guitaring on six of the tracks takes the music to another level and produces an unparallel brand of reggae, showing why he is one of the best guitarists in the Caribbean and why he is a regular feature of the St. Lucia Jazz Festival. The backup vocals (done mostly by Itoobaa and Nijah St. Catherine), which sometimes coos, sometimes wails, could stand on its own merit. Such that even without the lead vocals the music would feel complete. The comparison that comes to mind is Bob Marley's famous I-Threes.
Imagine this. It is late afternoon, and having escaped the stress of a hard days work and fought the horrendous traffic you arrive at the beach. A cool, salt-ladden breeze is blowing across the land. In the fading afternoon light, the sun, halfway beneath the ocean, casting gold on blue.
You insert Freedom into your CD player and rest back on your car's seat.
It is in this mood, under this setting, that one can most appreciate the prodigious talent embodied in Freedom.
ARTIST BIO:
Sylvester Peter, better known as Itoobaa, brings you an uncompromising brand of roots reggae. Music that echoes the profoundness of Bob Marley, the mellowness of Gregory Isaacs, and the edginess of Steel Pulse. Music the likes of which you would need to go to no other place but Jamaica and to no other time but the era Bob Marley and Peter Tosh reigned supreme. Born and raised in Vieux Fort, St. Lucia, Itoobaa has been composing songs since the late seventies. So the question many people are asking is, given the talent displayed on this album, what has taken Itoobaa so long to come out.
Itoobaa explains that in 1982, in his quest for truth, he joined the Niyabingi, a Rastafari denomination. The Niyabingi condemns popular music and all modern musical instruments as Jubalcane, devil worship. So after joining the Niyabingi, Itoobaa's music was reduced to African chants and the playing of the harp and drums. Yet, before Itoobaa's conversion to Niyabingi, he was something of a musical guru in Vieux Fort. He was band leader, arranger, chief song writer and a founding member of Nature. Still, Itoobaa found time to teach many aspiring musicians to play bass and guitar, and he arranged and put music to the lyrics of as many an artiste.
By the mid nineties Itoobaa realized that in spite of his religious beliefs much good could come out of his music. Not only could he provide guidance to a new generation of musicians, but his music could be a source of upliftment and inspiration to others in the same way that Bob Marley's music had been to him. And why had God given him this talent, if He had no intention for him to use it? Since then, while waiting for an opportunity to record, Itoobaa, accompanied with just an acoustic guitar, had been thrilling residents of Shantytown, Vieux Fort, with his music.
Another often asked question is how did Itoobaa come by his name. Well, in the late seventies, Merchant of Trinidad had a song Umbaya-Yaho about a chief who had a son called Mutoobaa. Itoobaa was constantly singing the song and the message of the song rang true to the manner in which he played soccer and cricket, so his friends started calling him Mutoobaa. After joining the Niyabingi, and recognizing Rastas' love of I's (Ital, I-Man), Itoobaa's friends changed his name from Mutoobaa to Itoobaa. Now, with more than thirty compositions of love, fellowship, righteous living, and redemption songs waiting to be recorded, it seems that the name Itoobaa will be with us for a long time.
SONG BY SONG REVIEW
The album opens with No Fuss - No Fight, a meditative, Aswad-style reggae that urges us that no matter our differences we mustn't fuss and fight. The song includes acoustic performances by Itoobaa that pull at the heart strings. No Fuss - No Fight stirs in the listener feelings of love, feelings of wanting to be loved, and feelings of forgiveness and redemption. The song makes one all warm and mellow inside. It is a catchy tune (chorus: Jah-Jah Children Don't You Fuss and Fight) that makes you wanna dance, yet there is a quietness inside the music that makes it perfect for a candle light dinner.
Then comes Freedom, the song after which the album is named, yet a song that didn't need to be named. Because even if it had remained untitled, its upbeat, jumpy, exhilarating beat that is as much blues as it is reggae, would have left no doubt in the minds of listeners that indeed the song is freedom. The song's African American freedom gospel flavor is another clue that would have given the name away. Few can listen to Freedom and remain unmoved, physically or spiritually. Because if the music doesn't get to you, the universal call for freedom would surely do. Monty Maxwell's blues guitaring eloquently screams out for freedom. Itoobaa tells the world, "I want to be free like the birds in the tree."
Yet there is more. Because in Freedom Itoobaa has teamed up with Gladstone Joseph to marry, in the manner of Lawryn Hill, reggae with hip-hop. How fitting? West Indian reggae DJ's sowed the seeds of rap and hiphop music, and now they are borrowing hiphop from America and fusing it with reggae. This is yet another example of the exchanges that have taken place and continues to take place between these two peoples who share a common ancestry and a common inheritance. While West Indians slaved on the sugar plantations of the Caribbean Islands, their American cousins slaved on the cotton plantations of Louisiana, Alabama, South Carolina, Mississippi--the South. West Indians provided America with leaders of the likes of Marcus Garvey and Stokely Carmichael that helped turned up a notch the struggle for civil rights, but then the liberation and black consciousness gained from the civil rights movement helped further the mental and spiritual liberation of West Indians.
Few forms of music can effectively convey anger as rap. Gladstone's rap rendition in Freedom adds a new dimension to the song. Unlike Itoobaa, who like a prophet, pleads and reasons for freedom, Gladstone angrily and fiercely demands freedom and he is prepared to gain his freedom by any means necessary. He says, "I will fight in the fog till we get our emancipation, grant it to us God." Not surprisingly, the rap conjures up images of the great freedom fighters of modern times: Martin Luther King, Fidel Castro, Malcolm X, Nelson Mandela, Mahatma Gandhi, Marcus Garvey.
In Judgement, the third song on the album, Itoobaa takes you back to pre-reggae, to the era of ska. But although the song is decisively ska, it is unquestioningly reggae. How Itoobaa managed to do that, I don't know. It is a song that can catch you off guard because it jumps at you, refusing to be ignored. If Freedom was asking, pleading, demanding freedom, then the tone and sharp jumpiness of Judgement is saying we have overcome, we are emancipated, we have gained our freedom, and what's going on here is nothing less than a victory march. And any doubt of that is quickly dispelled as saxophonist Robert Taylor sweetly and clearly blows the victory horns.
In the fourth track, Itoobaa slows things a bit to bring us a calming, soothing, meditation on Love and Happiness. It is a song of hope, a song of celebration, a song that uplifts the spirit. The message is clear: lets us love humanity and not money and we will live in peace and harmony, cause love and happiness we want. To bring us this message Itoobaa stops at nothing. He fuses reggae with rock, funk, jazz, and blues. The result is a composition destined to become a classic. Monty Maxwell also played his part. For the first time he sets aside his electric guitar and niced-up the session with acoustics.
Itoobaa slows down things even more to bring us Love is All it Takes. It is a dream song, and in that dream Itoobaa visualizes a perfect world, a world of love and harmony, and love was all it took to bring it about. As if singing his dream into reality, Itoobaa's voice is yearning, dreamlike, hopeful. The cooing backup vocals (done by Itoobaa and Nijah St. Catherine) are so calming that they could have hushed a raging river. The lead guitaring is soulful, meditative, heartfelt and does nothing to distract from the dream. Its solos soar to the heavens, and its magical call and response duet with Itoobaa reinforces the dreamlike quality of the song.
In Little Girl of Mine, the sixth song of the album, Itoobaa, like in the previous two songs, is still talking about love. But this time rather than brotherly love, he delves into matters of the heart. The song is a love lullaby, a lovers rock (Sanchez comes to mind), a boy meet girl story. The boy bears out his soul to his sweetheart. "You are my sunshine / Say you'll never leave me lonely / Say that you gonna be mine / I'll be with you till the end of time." Leaving nothing to chance, Itoobaa employs no other instrument but steel pan (played by Emmanuel O'Brien) to endear his sweetheart to him. And given the way the steel pan niced up and sweetened the session we can safely assume that indeed the girl will "come down his line."
Next comes Live Righteously, roots reggae Wailers' style. In this song Itoobaa is burdened with the injustice of the wicked and the plight of the righteous. With pain he observes: "what the good deserves the bad gets it." He earnestly calls upon God for help-- "Oh Jah-Jah guard your sheep from these wolves." Plaintively, he asks, "how long must the good suffer for the bad." The burden is too much to bear, so for once the peace-loving Itoobaa wishes nothing less than lightning, thunder, hurricane, earthquake, cyclone, brimstone, fire, and even plaques pestilence and death on the wicked. One evidence of good art is that all aspects of the work compliment and is in sync with each other and contributes to the overall theme. In Live Righteously the music mirrors the tone and text of the song. The base is deep, moaning, heart-renching. The guitar solo cries out in pain. It is soulful, plaintive, wailing. The keyboard, which creates the impression that we are listening to a grand orchestra, reinforces the notion that the song is about wickedness on a grand scale, and the calamities that Itoobaa wishes on the wicked are just as grand.
In Dread and the Beast, the eighth song on the track, Itoobaa stays with roots reggae, but it is roots reggae Steel Pulse style. In it Itoobaa, the Dread, battles with the Beast, and having sought the aid of Allen Augustin, alias Ali Mystic (who by some estimates is the best dub artiste in St. Lucia, and rival artistes like Buju Banton), the result of the battle is a forgone conclusion. Soundly beaten, the wicked who all the while had been enjoying the fruits of the good are visited with pestilence and brimstone. Besides performing their victory dance and singing praises, Itoobaa and Ali Mystic take this opportunity to taunt and poke fun at the defeated Beast. As in No Fuss - No Fight, Itoobaa's acoustic guitar adds a mellowness to the song, while Ali Mystic, who just turned twenty, brings not only an edginess to the music but an urgency, excitement and contemporary feel that is sure to thrill the under twenty-five-generation who like him grew up on dub music. So by teaming up with the youngster, the thirty-eight-year-old Itoobaa, who unlike Ali Mystic grew up on Bob Marley's, Peter Tosh's Third World's and Steel Pulse's music has brought his fans both the old and the new. He has done nothing less but build a bridge that allows both his generation and Ali Mystic's generation safe crossing into each other's world.
Itoobaa follows Dread and the Beast with Roots Music, a chanting, happy, upbeat , roots reggae tune in which the artiste is celebrating his music. Babylon can't keep him down, he must overcome, because he has his music, and his music is roots. Its reggae Bob Marley style. Its background vocals I-Threes style. Its roots music with a heavy dose of percussions. The lead guitar celebrates with the artiste and sing praises to his music. After all, we are talking about roots music, and according to Itoobaa it is music that brings unity and consciousness. It is music that revels the truth. It is music for both the old and the new.
As if approaching the end of the day, the end of his journey, in I See the Sun, the last track on the album, Itoobaa takes a few moments off to give thanks and praise to the Most High. Keeping the song as personal, and intimate as possible, he abandons all electric instruments, and in the manner of Bob Marley's Redemption Song, Itoobaa picks up his acoustic guitar and gives us a heart felt rendition. However, though the song adopts Bob Marley's acoustic guitaring, it is Third World's There is an Island in the Sun that the song feels most like. The music is calming, soothing, meditative. A perfect way to end a journey into a world of music that hints at the greats, but stands alone in its uniqueness.
Check out the artist's website:
http://www.jakoproductions.com/music.htmlTrack List:
1. No Fuss - No Fight
2. Freedom
3. Judgement
4. Love and Happiness
5. Love is All it Takes
6. Little Girl of Mine
7. Live Right
8. Dread and the Beast
9. Roots Music
10. I See the Sun
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