The Beat Review - DEIDEM

THE BEAT

Vol. 27 #2, 2008

Review by: Ted Boothroyd

It doesn't often happen in reggae that an artist's lyrics will develop noticeably from one album to the next. The devotion to Jah, the homages to love and ganga and the dance, the rantings against babylon - normally all these remain intact over the years, in intensity, vocabulary and point of view. Such consistency is the standard stuff of the genre. But Taj Weekes is different.

The initial Taj Weekes and Adowa disc, Hope and Doubt, was striking for its memorable tunes, rhythms and fragile-yet-husky tenor lead vocal. But the lyrics, despite a number of impressive images ("scream out mellow lullabies"), were by and large merely serviceable. Delivering the serious themes and emotional quotient we expect of roots-based reggae, they got the job done without demanding much of the listener or revealing anything unusual in the artist.

With Deidem, Weekes' second album, there's not only noticeable development in the lyrics, there's a fundamental struggle going on. Lined up on one side is the manner in which he regards the world when he examines it intellectually. On the other side stands the legacy of his religious convictions. Although at times he puts on a brave face, he seems to realize that those two sides are suddenly refusing to be reconciled. The various ways Weekes deals with these conflicts - along with the strong melodies and performances, as before - are what make this album a welcome addition to the world's supply of reggae.

Yes, something has happened between the first and second albums to change Weekes' outlook. If you investigate his Web site, you'll see that Weekes has indeed faced his share of traumatic events, including recently, so perhaps that's the key. In any case, what he once held certain is now less so; he's no longer sure he has all the answers; he's less dogmatic, more measured.

Which isn't to suggest he's coldly logical on Deidem, or that his views are immaculately argued. They're not. He's still a free-flow-of-ideas kind of guy. It's hard sometimes to decipher where one thought ends and another starts, and the minimal punctuation in the lyric sheet doesn't help. So while the choice of language ensures a strong emotional impact, the intellectual impact depends on the listener consciously making connections. But with Deidem that's part of the pleasure.

You need examples. Track one is "Angry Language." Over a powerful one-drop rhythm accompanied by wah-wah lead guitar, the singer expresses his fears: It seems I am slowly forgetting/all I learnt from a Bible page...I'm learning an angry language and I'm armed with the tools of rage...I'm afraid I might lose my composure/and destroy all the things I hold dear.

Already he's equivocating ("it seems" and "I might"). And the solution? It's more Zen-like than concrete and active: "I'm gonna seek the spaces in my thought/to unlearn what I've been taught." The yearning Clapton-inspired guitar solo is perfect accompaniment.

Track two is "Propaganda War." An organ drone leads the instrumentation, with call-and-response vocals between lead and backup singers. The lyrics at first talk of war, with its deceptions ("tailored lies") and arbitrariness ("freedom for some, captivity for the rest"), but then switch to the stark imagery that Billie Holiday made famous with Abel Meerpol's "Strange Fruit": "On a poplar tree they hanged me/strangest fruit to ever grow." The intellectual link between propaganda war and racial hatred is the listener's to make. Weekes leaves it open.

"Little Fire" uses a fussy rockers drumming style to carry along a complex metaphor about (I think) the U.S. abandoning its "polite" way and becoming the aggressor: it ends: "force rules with wrong/till right grows strong." "Since Cain" uses the Genesis story as starting point to deplore the cycle of violence; the conclusion is that "Peace can be gotten if sought." Important, difficult questions are being asked, but the only answers are meager ones, inadequate to the task. Hopeful is as strong as it gets.

And so it goes, for seven more thoughtful, memorable, tuneful songs. Weekes is concerned, involved, passionate, but without easy answers. In his first album, when what he observed simply didn't add up, he had an easy out: "Jah works in mysterious ways." But now, confronting the atrocities in Darfur or the chaos of Louisiana's floods (in a spare piano style, gorgeous melody and dry vocal manner that all channel Randy Newman), he struggles to understand and he strains to maintain his optimism, yet he doesn't evoke Jah. On a personal level, where he once wailed his self-pity for the miserable way his woman treated him, he now sings of his regret for his own role in the soured relationship.

Yes, Taj Weekes is different. As a reggae lyricist who is unafraid of  being undogmatic, he's certainly different from most of his peers, and even from the man he was in his own first album. He uses his unusual voice unusually well. His arrangements take great advantage of his fine backing vocalists and his crack team of musicians, including horn section. He writes beautiful tunes. Deidem has it all.