Nasio Fontaine Discography of CDs

Nasio Fontaine CD discography Reggae is not where one normally turns for innovation and originality. Notice the song titles on this Nasio Fontaine retrospective: "Crucial," "Africa We Love," "Jah Calling," "Jah Glory," "Rise Up," etc. Also notice that of all the many reggae singers currently jacking Bob Marley's vocal style, no one is doing so more consciously and explicitly than Fontaine: he's got Marley down cold, right down to the idiosyncratic diphthongs and the raspy little yodels at the ends of key phrases. Not everything about his recent albums has been Marleyesque, though. This collection's title track is much more soul-inflected than anything Marley ever recorded, and neither "She Lost Track" nor the lovely "When" is really a reggae song at all. (And if you listen closely, you'll hear pizzicato strings on "Crucial," which are certainly not something you hear in reggae every day.) Most importantly, about two-thirds of this album is pop music of the highest caliber, with hooks that bite deep and choruses that soar -- most notably on the swinging "African Spirit," the piously beautiful "Jah Calling," and the especially sharp "Living in the Positive," a track that Marley himself would have ...

Nasio Fontaine CD discography On his fourth album, Dominican-born reggae singer Nasio Fontaine continues to work a version of modern roots reggae that owes a tremendously deep debt to Bob Marley -- a debt that is clear not only in Fontaine's highly derivative vocal tone and phrasing, but also in the dry and tensile midtempo lope of his songs. This isn't really a criticism; Marley had a great sound and didn't have time to use it all up before his tragically early death, so if others want to pick it up and run with it, so much the better, as long ...

Nasio Fontaine albums Here's the thing about Nasio that is always going to get in his way: he's basically a Bob Marley imitator, right down to the vocal quirks (that hoarse yodel at the end of a line, that tendency to turn simple vowel sounds into complex diphthongs) and the female backing vocals. Here's the thing that's going to keep him going: Bob Marley died long before people were done with him, and the world still needs someone who can sing like that and write songs of uplift and admonishment that way, and who can lead a band that rocks and grooves as ...