Ultimate Collection: Burning Spear

Ultimate Collection: Burning Spear

This overview of Winston “Burning Spear” Rodney’s fruitful 40-year career illustrates why he’s reggae’s professor emeritus of Jamaican history. Over earthy, percussion-tinged roots tracks he artfully articulates his people’s triumphs, struggles, and spiritual concerns. Like that of a great lecturer, Rodney’s robust voice rises and falls with dramatic intensity, issuing aching pleas for love and unity (“The Invasion [A.K.A. Black Wa-Da-Da]”) and cascading through missives on natural living (“Man in the Hills”). His fiery transcendence in extolling Jamaican national hero Marcus Garvey and his sparse, monk-like chants (“Institution”) are transfixing.

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