REVIEW
What: Ziggy Marley with Carmanah
When: Thursday
Where: Royal Theatre
Rating: Five stars (out of five)
Ziggy Marley’s first-ever concert on local soil was a music fan’s delight.
Forget about limiting the good vibes to reggae music. Marley’s set on Thursday had a little bit of everything going for it, from feel-good rhythms to sun-kissed singalongs. Genres didn’t enter into the equation on this night.
More than anything else, it had plenty of top-flight reggae. That’s a rarity around these parts.
We’ve had our share of Jamaican acts over the years, to be sure — from the Wailers to Jimmy Cliff — but we’ve never had Marley himself. The native of Kingston was booked at the Royal Theatre in 1990, for a sold-out show, but he ultimately cancelled before showtime.
Marley made good this time around.
“Victoria, what a beautiful place!” the eldest son of Bob Marley said after taking the stage, to a roar from the more than 1,200 fans in attendance who only got louder as the night progressed.
Marley, 44, was backed by a drum-tight eight-piece band, no members of which were from his extended family. That isn’t a surprise given that he hasn’t been with the Marley family band, the Melody Makers, since going solo in 2003.
Still, with his family history, there is always the expectation that something Bob Marley-related will show its head, and it did just 30 minutes in when he delivered Lively Up Yourself, a Wailers staple.
It just got better from there. To be fair, the Bob-isms were obvious from the get-go. Ziggy sounds an awful lot like his dad, and though he is without his father’s world-changing charisma, there’s a timbre to his voice that is unmistakably Marley.
He wasn’t alone on his fantastic voyage: Singer Tracy Hazzard joined in on the songs Changes and Justice, while guitarist Ian Coleman carried the chika-chika leads with a steely presence.
Ziggy offered some hits of his own, including Tomorrow People and Look Who’s Dancin’, the biggest bangs from the Melody Makers to date.
But when it comes down to it, there is no denying the elder Marley brand, and when he delivered a small handful of hits from his father (Is This Love, War and Get Up, Stand Up among them), the crowd went haywire.
The generous amounts of atmosphere owed a considerable debt to the Royal Theatre staff and security, who allowed fans to shake the junk in their trunk throughout the show — even in the aisles.
Dancing was not a requirement but an expectation on this night. Kudos to the theatre for letting fans get funky.
The night got underway with a well-received performance from members of the local group Carmanah, whose 30-minute opening set was a rootsy delight.
Singer-fiddler Laura Mitic, singer-guitarist Pat Ferguson, and guitarist-saxophonist Mike Baker acquitted themselves nicely.