New York, NY (Top40 Charts) They say all good things take time and that statement fits well when describing the journey of the Rasta Rock Opera and the release of the "Respect and Love Manifesto". "It's like
Bob Marley met
Jimi Hendrix and they decided to do a record with a rainbow of other musical genres intersecting" said co-writer and guitarist Stevie
Marco about the album's release.
The Journey:
It started back in 2012 in the world-famous "Mangos Tropical Café" located on Ocean Blvd in South Beach Miami. At that time the band was called "Inna-sense" founded by Vibert Chang and Jimi Dred. One of the touring stops was another famous spot called Seacrets in Ocean City Maryland which is where Stevie
Marco entered the picture.
"I used to walk across the street from my condo on 50th Street to Seacrets to check out the live music and one night I saw Jimi Dred and Vibert Chang perform and they blew me away" recalls Stevie Marco. During one of the set breaks Stevie approached Jimi Dred and asked if he could sit in with the band the next night. "That was sort of a bold request", remembers Dred who thought to himself "either this cat is full of shit or he can really play". Stevie showed up the next night with his white fender Stratocaster and the rest is history.
The musical chemistry ignited from the start into a completely new sound that the band branded as "Rasta Rock" which caused Stevie to move to Miami and join the band. Stevie is an accomplished rock and jazz guitarist with a melodic and edgy style that melted with authentic Reggae to create the unique Rasta Rock sound. The original group included Vibert Chang on vocals, Jimi Dred on vocals and keyboards, Stevie
Marco on guitar and vocals.
Junior Richards on drums and Icardo Richards on bass and vocals. The band was blessed with talented writers with diverse approaches to songwriting and production. "We fed off of each other both on stage and in the recording studio and every night after the show at Mangos we would pull an all-nighter in Vibert's in-home recording studio in South Beach", recalls drummer
Junior Richards.
As the first pass of the record was nearing completion the band had a falling out as a result of an incident at the gig one night at Mangos. Stevie left the band and came back to Washington D.C. with a copy of the masters from the recording sessions in South Beach and began to write some new tracks and went back into the studio to complete his version of what the band had started. At that point the band was still called Inna-sense without Stevie
Marco performing with the group. During Stevie's absence that lasted almost two years, Stevie kept on recording at Blue Room
Music Studios in Bethesda Maryland. "At that point I wanted to expand the sound of the Rasta Rock Opera with additional compositions and other talented musicians to let this new "Rasta Rock" sound develop more deeply". A litany of "A" list recording artists like Cindy Blackman Santana, Buster Williams,
Karen Briggs, Scott Ambush, Marcus Baylor and trumpet legend Joe Brotherton performed on the album that also included amazing local talent like, Rachael Renzi, Dennys Moura, Poetmon, and Ddendyl to infuse an entirely new level creativity and spirit into the album.
In 2018 Stevie was nearing completion of his version of the record and decided to call Jimi Dred to see if things could be patched up and if members of the original band would be interested in getting back together to do some performance videos and help finish Stevie's version of the record under a new band called "The Rasta Rock Opera". Dred and the other band members agreed, and the next chapter of the Rasta rock Opera was about to be written. In 2019 both Icardo Richards, the band's bass player, and Jimi Dred flew back and forth to D.C from Miami and spent the next year adding new tracks, changing others and fine tuning the finished product with Stevie.
The Musicians and
Music of the Rasta Rock Opera
By the time the record was completed in June of 2020, 54 Musicians had performed on the Respect and Love Manifesto. "When you are working with a topflight musician or vocalist in the recording studio, the charts go out the window and you let the artist feel the track and the music's energy and see where it goes" said Stevie Marco. This production technique revealed the magnetic soul of the LP that hits you like a slug to the chest the second the Respect and Love Manifesto begins.
Track 1 "War of the Spirit" puts lead vocalist Ryan Rawlings in the spotlight who immediately grabs the attention of the listener. "Ryan sounds like an angry Jim Morrison who is experiencing serious inner turmoil after taking a life. Rap Artis Poetmon amps up the intensity with his hip-hop interlude while the rhythm section renders a heavy Reggae-Rock grove with explosive guitar licks perfectly placed.
Track 2 "We Need Love" features Vibert Chang on vocals sounding like Buju Banton in his prime. There is a heavy backbeat and a layered feedback guitar that is the foundation of the composition that underpins vocal clips from Eisenhower's famous farewell address warning about the dangers of a rising Military Industrial Complex that would lead to more wars and destruction.
Track 3 "Time to Live" has world famous violinist
Karen Briggs take center stage in one of the most memorable violin performances ever recorded. Stevie
Marco delivers some "White Boy Rap" inspired by Tupac Shakur and a guitar solo reminiscent of Brian May of Queen. The track also takes a page from the
Pink Floyd classic "
The Wall" as uses dozens of children recorded in an auditorium singing a key vocal line in unison that goes: "we all know it's time to free our worried minds, the time is gonna come for us to love as one and be free" Jules Barrenger and Rachael Renzi perform inspirational background vocal tracks on the composition.
Track 4 "Marley" is a tribute to the eternal Bob Marley. Dennys Moura sings the lead vocal at an elite level reserved for the greats with
Jessica Denson doing all of the background vocals. Dennys is one of the few artists with perfect pitch and a roundness of tone that separates him from everyone else.
Karen Briggs performs an emotional violin solo with Conrad Osipowicz on drums and Icardo Richards on bass who comes from the streets of Kingston
Jamaica and lays down the melodic driver of the bass in commanding Reggae style.
Track 5 "Standin in the Purple Haze" is all about honoring the legacy of
Jimi Hendrix with a collaboration between Stevie Marco, Joe Brotherton, Marcus Baylor, Cheikh Ndoye and Efi Tovia. The track takes you on an eerie journey into the afterlife of the Voodoo child known as Jimi Hendrix. Just weeks before Jimi's death, Miles Davis was slated to do a recording session with Hendrix but Jimi died of a tragic drug overdose just days before the scheduled session. Joe Brotherton's trumpet style and Stevie's Hendrix-like guitar chops were inspired by the fantasy recording session between
Jimi Hendrix and Miles Davis that unfortunately, never happened.
Track 6 "Rasta Rockstar" features R&B tenor
Christopher John and the amazing rapper Flex Mathews with Marcus Baylor on drums, Cheich Ndoye on bass, Stevie
Marco on guitar and Rachael Renzi on back-up vocals. The song is a rallying cry for respect and unity between us in a time when we all seem so divided. This song represents the authentic Rasta Rock sound with an uplifting positive message and wicked ending guitar solo that is a signature track on the Respect and Love Manifesto.
Track 7 "Love is a Real Ting" highlights the talents of Christos D.C. who is one of the most respected Reggae artists in the industry. Christos lays down the spoken work with a symphonic pipe organ and acoustic guitar backdrop pondering the pains of love lost. Guest artist Risa echo's Christos's message in Portuguese with Reggae master Jahmane also lending his spoken word to the composition.
Track 8 "Came and Went" (Maya's Song). is about losing someone you love. The composition is a dedication to Ralph Hunter who was the drummer for Inna-sense who died suddenly leaving behind a young daughter named Maya. The track is also dedicated to the great Maya
Angelo who touched so many lives and inspired women of every color to reach for the stars and stand up for what's right and to always maintain a positive self-image no matter what the circumstance. The original members of the band perform this composition in the embedded video herein with Heda Rose performing the background vocal.
Track 9 "Lovin Feelin" is about what makes the world go round, that being sexual attraction, which is something you can never really predict, it just happens. R&B lead vocalist
Christopher John teams up with rap star Flex Mathews on the vocals with Heda Rose handling the female lead vocal. Marcus Baylor and Cheikh Ndoye crush the rhythm section with an intense saxophone / guitar battle that takes the song to an epic climax with Stevie
Marco on guitar and Brian Fulkowski on tenor saxophone.
Track 10 "Stay" features the amazing Ddendyl. Stevie discovered Dendyl in a piano bar in Rockville Maryland and heard her perform a song she had written called Stay. "When I heard that song and especially the way her soulful voice rang out, I knew it was a timeless hit so I asked her to put that song on the record and I would perform and produce it with her" recalls Stevie. Conrad Osipowicz and Teo Lee performed on the drum and bass tracks with Stevie
Marco on the guitar and Efi Tovia performing keyboard special effects.
Track 11 "Luvya Luvya Luvya" is a smash Reggae hit that's all about the winding road of love from childhood and throughout life. The video from this track is very special because it was at the center of the lawsuit Song fi filed against YouTube for removing the Luvya video from their platform. This event was the moment Stevie
Marco decided to create Song fi.com that would be designed for the "Arts" and the "
People" and to build a company that would make a meaningful difference in the way social media and the music industry operated. The lead vocal is a Vibert Chang masterpiece with the Richards brothers on drums and base, Jimi Dred on Keyboards and background vocals with Stevie
Marco on guitar.
Track 12 "Taxi to Eternity" is about coming to grips with the eminent end of life as time passes and it gets closer. An old man gets in a taxi and begins to spill his guts to the taxi driver and the conversation sums up the entire life experience in about 40 seconds. Tadek Osipowicz plays the Taxi driver and Henry St. John Fitzgerald plays the old man staring down death.
Track 13 "Corner Cafe" continues with the old man exiting the taxi and going into the corner café for a drink and to ponder things when he sees a young waitress walk by and for just an instant, his mind takes him into the distant past and he feels exactly the way he used to feel. Jazz greats Cindy Blackman
Santana on brush drums and Buster Williams on stand-up base melt with with Joe Brotherton on trumpet, Derek Walker on piano with Stevie
Marco on the lead vocal with Rachael Renzi on background vocals.
Track 14 "
No More" is an anthem of respect written by Stevie
Marco and Flex Mathews about the Newtown tragedy that took the lives of 26 young children and their protectors at
Sandy Hook Elementary School on December 14th, 2012. The Rasta Rock Opera in cooperation with D.C. Public Schools performed a Respect and Love concert at Jefferson Middle School to stop gun violence and created a video that included hundreds of students and facility members as well and the Rasta Rock Opera band. The composition combines Flex's hip hip message with the rock lead vocal performed by Stevie Marco.
Track 15 "The Star-Spangled Banner" has been performed many time by many people but perhaps the most famous version of the Star-Spangled Banner was performed by
Jimi Hendrix at Woodstock. Rasta Rock Opera lead guitarist Stevie
Marco and drummer Conrad Osipowicz wanted to do a rendition of our
National Anthem "Hendrix-style" in a large crowd setting that included a dynamic drum element to the rendition. The
Jimi Hendrix Foundation was so impressed with the performance they endorsed the Rasta Rock Opera's debut album after viewing the live performance by Stevie and Conrad.
Track 16 "A Trying Situation" The year 2020 and all its traumatic events impacted so many and continues to present one of the greatest human challenges ever. The ability to continue to try and have faith, sometimes against incredible odds, is one of humanities greatest gifts and required now more than ever. This composition addresses that challenge and is performed acapella by Ryan Rawlings and Heda Rose who capture the essence of the human struggle. This version of "A Trying Situation" was the first take in the studio and was meant to take its place in vocal performance history.
The Rasta Rook Opera's debut album "Respect and Love Manifesto" drops on Song fi on March 21st 2021. Each Song fi member upon registration will find all 16 individual music tracks of in their music library as well as the 54-minute gapless version. Also, seven Rasta Rock Opera performance videos will be found in every Song fi members video library.
