Music > Live Reviews

Julian Marley

22/08/16

Last night at the Arts Centre I attended my second ever live reggae gig, courtesy of Julian Marley. As he is Bob Marley’s son I was expecting a good show, and after seeing Macka B last year I was excited to see some more live reggae.

The night started with support act Iba Mahr getting the quite busy Arts Centre into the groove. He started off really well with some great beats and got the crowd to interact with him. But his last few tracks didn’t quite have the same infectious rhythms and weren’t keeping the audience properly occupied, with the crowd decreasing in size during the end of his short set. But despite this I did enjoy Iba Mahr - he got the night to a perfect start and we were all ready for Julian.

Shortly after Iba had finished Julian came onto the stage with a good reception and busted into his first track. Everyone was enjoying it. You could tell this is someone who knows how to play live and just create some brilliant reggae sounds. Bob would be proud I’m sure. Julian had a really good band behind him as well with two keyboard players, a guitarist, bass player, drummer and two sisters providing backing vocals. They all played brilliantly and were clearly enjoying themselves playing for such an enthusiastic crowd. Julian played a range of different songs for us, and even a few Bob Marley songs which were great, my personal favourite being Exodus. He played some of his own tracks and even a few new ones as well in his hour and half set. When he went off we all knew that wasn’t going to be it as the crowd bellowed “more” and “encore”. So they all came back on and gave us an extra four songs finishing it all with One Love. What a perfect song to end it all with. He brought Iba Mahr back on to sing with him, and they sang arm in arm, lost in the music.

In conclusion this was a great gig, we were all jamming throughout and I can now say I have seen Bob Marley’s son live. Julian Marley and his band played brilliantly and got the crowd busting moves and singing along. Anyone who likes Bob Marley and wasn’t there has certainly missed out. It was a Punky Reggae party for all.