“One of the reasons I got into reggae is because it made sense to me, lyrically.”—Michael Goldwasser.
Nearly ten years of cutting-edge reggae tribute albums bring the Easy Star All-Stars to the forefront again. In August, the release of Thrillah hit stores and web. A rhythmic nod to the Michael Jackson’s earth-shattering, 29× platinum album Thriller, Michael Goldwasser and the Easy Star All-Stars reconstruct the polished production into something irie. They will perform with The Aggrolites at the Howard Theatre, this Sunday October 7th.
I asked Goldwasser—mastermind, producer and the son of a rabbi, to give me a little backdrop on what I think is the core of reggae: spirituality and the link between Judaism and Rastafarianism.
Goldwasser starts, “A lot of Bob Marley’s lyrics and Dennis Brown’s lyric are translations from the Jewish bible. It totally makes since because ‘rastafari’ is steeped in Jewish scriptures. A lot of the lyrics from Marley are from the Tehillim [Psalms] with his own interpretation. When I reason with my Rastafari brethren, we can talk about [the Jewish-Rastafari connection] because we have a shared vocabulary.”
At a very young age, Michael groomed himself for musical play and production. “When I was 13,” he recalls, “I had good friend who was learning guitar. I learned a few things from him. I took a few lessons here and there. I was self-taught. When I was young, music was music; I wasn’t thinking of genre. I wanted to play all styles of music. I listened to ska when it was big in New York.
“In college I was concentrated in R&B and reggae. The Easy Star All-Stars started around 1995. I had the idea with three friends to start a record label. A lot of music coming out of Jamaica at that time was computerized and the lyrics very slack. And, then, in America all the reggae bands on the radio only [knew of] Bob Marley, and that’s it. They sounded a like a watered-down version of his style of music. So we thought, since we love reggae from the ’70s and ’80s, based on live musicianship, let’s do it ourselves.
“I wrote the music and produced the recording. We called ourselves the Easy Star All-Stars because one, branding was important, and two, we were an all-star cast of reggae musicians.”
Since Dub Side of the Moon, Michael and the Easy Star All-Stars have toured internationally. Michael says he is content with the reggae scene on the world-scale but calls for more individualism among artists. There is such a drive to mass produce tracks and albums; quantity causes the loss of quality.
When Michael and crew choose an album, they look for greatness and diversity within the tracks. On Thrillah, guests include Michael Rose and Luciano, each of whom appeared on Lonely Hearts. Together they worked their own unique styles to two of the original album’s best known songs, “Beat It” and “Billie Jean”. Another previous collaborator is Mojo Morgan, who appeared on Radiodread and battles it out with Steel Pulse on “The Girl is Mine.”
Talking about the vinyl movement with Michael, he reminisces about the format’s sound. “I love the sound quality of vinyl. I love when tape is mixed and mastered then recorded on vinyl. It’s about the experience. Putting on side A, reading the liner notes, checking out the [printed] lyrics. It was a big part of my growing up. He jokes, “Maybe there’s no real quality there, just nostalgia… but it works for me. I still enjoy it.”
With his rich voice, Michael speaks anecdotally of his experiences. Shortly after the release of Dub Side of the Moon, Michael received a call to play at a wedding. After meeting the wedding planner he remembers being taken aback by “security issues.”
“Wow. It’s just a wedding,” he laughs. “When [the planner] realized I didn’t know whose wedding it was, I soon found out [the bride] was New York City Mayor Bloomberg’s daughter.” Michael felt very brazen at that moment because of the ubiquity of the Easy Star All-Star fan base. The band played the entire Moon album at the wedding.
I asked Goldwasser to imagine himself at an organization with a mission… What would that mission be?
“To break down the barriers to where people [who wouldn’t normally listen to our genre] understands that it’s just music. Music had a lot to do with breaking down racial barriers in the United States because you couldn’t stop the youth from wanting to go to the same shows. People gave reggae a chance. Dub Side of the Moon was so innovative that it turned listeners on to a genre that, beforehand, didn’t interest them.”
Michael reinforced the musical mission. “We’ve succeeded in it.”
Goldwasser is quite the historian on reggae music as a derivation of American R&B music. We talked about how Jamaican reggae bands covers popular American songs to get radio play.
To win a pair of tickets to the show this Sunday at Howard Theatre, tell us, past or present, what is your favorite reggae cover of a popular song? It doesn’t have to be American, though if I were to choose, I really dig New Kingston’s cover of Johnny Cash’s “I Walk the Line.”
The winner of the tickets will be chosen at noon on Thursday, October 4th and will also receive a two disc 12″ LP of Easy Star All-Star’s Thrillah!
