Various Artists - Wicked A Go Feel It (Classic Roots & Culture 1978 - 1985, TROJAN) English review

I thought a lot about what the second CD I will review should be. Fortunately, a lots of  good releases are lined up on the shelves straight from Europe, the USA, Jamaica and probably even from Africa . Hence Friday (20.09.) was the 60th anniversary of Haile Selassie's visit to Hungary, I thought the most appropriate would be a roots album compiled by Trojan Records.

Various Artists - Wicked A Go Feel It (1996, TROJAN)

Total Play: 68:35 mins.

The producers compiled mainly the best tunes of classic roots' second period. This period already brought a more mature sound to reggae, and in this era it can be felt that digital sound gained more and more space in Jamaican dancehalls, and early dancehall also spread its wings. Still, roots managed to remain a point of reference, obviously thanks to legends still alive at the time, such as Bob Marley, Peter Tosh, and of course to the emerging generation, such as Sugar Minott.

In contrast to the two big icons, Sugar Minott is featured on this CD with two songs, and it looks like the producers of the disc thought it would be worthwhile to include two or even three songs by some artists on the disc. So we can also listen to the iconic conscious recordings of Al Campbell, Cornell Campbell, Ronnie Davis, Barry Brown or even Barrington Levy, some of which I played on the Friday show on www.liberatedradio.com between  7 and 8 in the evening.

The fittest of the fittest survives

One of the central messages of the record and the Rasta philosophy is "Fittest of the fittest shall survive" - ​​i.e. the fittest survives, this also describes the motto of Kingston's  poor neighbourhoods at the time. Some of the songs captures the ghetto society in action, like Cornell Campbell's "Judgement Come", in which he highlights that the late 70s and early 80s were the years of deprivation for the poorer classes.

 Is Zion the goal to reach or not?

One of my favorites is the message of Johnny Clarke's song "Moving On To Zion", however "average people" are migrating to Canada, USA and England, and no one is going to Zion, i.e. Africa, including Ethiopia. However, in the second half of the song, the singer points out that the destination for Rastas is Africa, i.e. Zion.

 Barry Brown's "Enter The Kingdom of Zion" continues this idea, that no sinner man can enter the gates of Zion, only the Rasta. Only the fittest get to Ethiopia because they are followers of Jah. Ronnie Davis' classic "No Weak Heart" tries to plant the same message in their brains and hearts.

 In the late 80s and mid-90s, this approach (to reach Zion) was interpreted as a spiritual goal.

If you don't want purchase a Trojan Box, this is your CD!

This album doesn't contain any songs that you wouldn't find on another Trojan release, but it actually contains the best roots songs from, for example, the Trojan Rastafari Box Set. One of the big advantages of this release compared to the box set is that it is cheaper. Although you have to pay for 13 pounds for the Mint copy available on Discogs.com,  we can still find an VG+ copy on this side of the channel, in Germany, for 8 euros.

Advise: Since it is not available on the streaming sites, please click pon my compiled YT playlist.

Selecta Sebő (Afro-Soul Sound)