Bob Marley
Exodus

THE REVIEW

I leave it to others, because I am not able to, to classify in order of importance the masterpieces of Bob Marley. The ranking game on what the best album of an artist is, is a silly and self-serving game. Many have tried, and with Marley, it often risked the verge of a brawl: "Burnin" is better than "Rastaman Vibrations"? "Uprising" is better than "Survival"? There you go, everyone could say their piece, and there would be no end to it.

My favorite is "Exodus", released in the graceful year of 1977. I have no memories of the album's release (I was only 2 years old, if you don’t mind), but I have very vivid memories of the majesty and grandeur of this incomparable masterpiece that, equally, has nothing to envy compared to the great albums made in the USA of the mid-Seventies. At a time when the 'Saturday Night Fever' and the myth of dance music (loud, repetitive, boring, adolescent) were exalted, Bob Marley gifts us a discographic gem that is hard to forget after the first listening.
"Exodus" is, for the first time, entirely recorded at Island Studios in London, and the band usually accompanying Marley in his albums and concerts undergoes a slight shake-up: Alvin Patterson, an old friend of Marley, joins on percussion, while Julian Murvin debuts on guitar. The music becomes more intense, more rhythmic, and if you want, more hammering: the usual display of great Jamaican experience, indispensable choirs, and a precise choice from the first track: to be damnably commercial without renouncing class and substance. Something that, unfortunately, many have not been able to do.
And damnably commercial are tracks like "Natural Mystic" or the truly remarkable final crescendo of "One Love/People Get Ready". On the radio, the catchy single "Jammin", more cohesive and compact than the still excellent "No Woman No Cry", plays frequently.
A separate mention deserves the almost 8 minutes of "Exodus", demonic ska that brought Marley to the top of all the world charts and established him, if there was ever a need, as the undisputed king of rasta music.

On the other hand, "Exodus" couldn’t be anything but a masterpiece: from the simple and unadorned cover to the double meaning of 'exodus': the distance of the slaves' descendants from Africa (and perhaps this is the most correct meaning), to Marley's personal exodus, who was forced to move to London after being the victim of an assassination attempt during an election campaign in Jamaica. 
I don't know if "Exodus" is indeed Marley's best album, perhaps it's his most famous, it certainly contains memorable tracks, but it is undoubtedly the last piece before the end. Because if it is true that after this album, Marley would still record other albums (including the masterpiece "Uprising"), it is also true that it is with "Exodus" that his health troubles began, which would lead to Marley's untimely death: after the album's release, Marley discovered he had cancer; doctors told him that to cure it, a toe needed to be amputated, but Marley refused the operation as it was contrary to the rasta culture. He managed to live another four years, but it was from that fateful decision not to undergo surgery that Marley's troubles began: death is never a nice thing, but to have passed away at only 36 was just one way to enter myth and legend. Too bad that, in myth and legend, Marley was already there while alive.