Live At Montreux Jazz Festival 2001
Winston Rodney, a.k.a. Burning Spear, has been making highly political  and personal reggae music since the early 1970s. Noted as one of the very  first artists to make overtly Rastafarian/Marcus Garvey-centric music,  Rodney is an elder statesman of the music. This live album starts with one  of his earliest hits, "Pick Up the Pieces," and the rock-steady rhythms and  lovingly punctuated horn riffs are remarkably fresh. Likewise, the two tunes  from Burning Spear's breakthrough 1975 album,Marcus Garvey--"Old  Marcus" and "Slavery Days"--are as magnificently intense and uplifting as  ever. The only drawbacks are an occasional '80s-cheesy keyboard run and a  few too many rock guitar licks. A spoken-word cover of "Oh Happy Day"  reveals one of the music's unspoken influences, gospel music, while the  majority of the disc rarely strays from a levitational, tranced-out,  riff-heavy mix of flawlessly executed reggae and dub.--Mike McGonigal