Kaya 40

Kaya was released following the most turbulent two-year period in reggae legend Bob Marley’s too-short life. A near-fatal 1976 assault in Jamaica had forced Marley to escape his would-be assassins by moving to London, which resulted in the fiery sermons and uplifting anthems of his 1977 international breakthrough, Exodus. Coming less than a year later, Kaya is the sound of a haunted, hunted, and homesick man now seeking salvation in songs of love (the bluesy lament “She’s Gone”) and community (the gorgeous, hazy, dub-inflected new rendition of “Sun Is Shining”). While politics occasionally surface (“Crisis”), Kaya is really one of the most personal albums Marley ever made, and one of his most purely beautiful, captured here in a crisp 40th-anniversary mix that still retains the original’s enveloping warmth.