Conscious Party

Reggae legend Bob Marley had lots of kids with many different women, several of whom have gone on to music careers of their own. But none has achieved the fame and international success of Ziggy Marley, his oldest son with wife Rita. While in their teens, Bob and Rita’s five children formed a band called the Melody Makers, who recorded two albums before hitting it big with this one, originally issued in 1988 and then reissued in deluxe editions in 2026. On Conscious Party, you hear Ziggy as the firmly established bandleader starting to move beyond the confines of old-school roots reggae while still focusing on traditional themes: African repatriation (“Dreams of Home,” complete with Nyabinghi drumming), the importance of knowing one’s cultural history (“Tomorrow People”), the futility of Babylonian politics (“Tumblin’ Down”), etc. The vocal resemblance to his father is remarkable on this album, but he is clearly carving his own path musically. On the deluxe digital reissue, the original program is augmented with multiple remixes of several tracks, including “Tomorrow People” and “Tumblin’ Down” (on which the 7” remix draws, charmingly, on the Tom Tom Club’s hit “Genius of Love’), as well as a live recording of “Lee and Molly.”