Reggae

Protoje – Answer To Your Name

David “Ram Jam” Rodigan recently organized a live studio session for the BBC 1Xtra show with Protoje in Kingston, Jamaica.  Protoje performed 3 songs from his upcoming album “Ancient Future”, one of which has not been released yet.  The song is a nice upbeat ska track called “Answer To Your Name”:

The chorus of the song sounded vaguely familiar, and sure enough it is an updated version of Prince Buster’s track “Girl Answer Your Name” released in 1966 on the famous Blue Beat label:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XqLOZmHB6vI

Protoje also did a version of his summer anthem “Who Knows” in the studio sans Chronixx.  I heard in an interview that the original recording of this song actually didn’t include Chronixx, but Winta James (the producer of Protoje’s upcoming album) suggested the collaboration which subsequently resulted in the biggest hit of 2014.  So what you hear in the video below may very well have been what the track would have sounded like in it’s original form:

For good measure, he also performed another track he released late last year called “Stylin'”:

I recently discovered that this track is actually based on the song “Can’t Pop No Style” by Hugh Mundell released in 1981.  I wouldn’t exactly call it a cover, because it doesn’t bear much resemblance to the original track sonically, but it is clearly related lyrically:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ib7SyctYBeo

Having discovered the tracks some of his new songs are based on, the meaning of his album title “Ancient Future” is starting to become clear.  In fact it seems quite fitting that the unofficial leader of the Reggae Revival is drawing on the past to push his message forward into the future.

One comment
Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *