Dix­ie-Ann Dick­son

It was a night of wait­ing for pa­trons at the much an­tic­i­pat­ed House of Mar­ley con­cert at the Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um on Thurs­day night. Many turned up at 7 pm, ex­pect­ing gates to be opened ear­ly for the ad­ver­tised 9 pm start, but they weren't al­lowed in­to the venue un­til 10.30 pm. The open­ing acts in­clud­ed eight-time Road March win­ner Su­perblue, his daugh­ter Fay Ann Lyons-Al­varez and Bun­ji Gar­lin and Col­lis Du­ran­ty, who put the au­di­ence in the mood for the big reg­gae acts. But more wait­ing en­sued, and af­ter an hour-long de­lay, pa­trons were heard grum­bling that the head­line acts were tak­ing too long to hit the stage. How­ev­er, when Ky-Mani Mar­ley ap­peared on­stage at around 1 am, the at­mos­phere changed, as he wast­ed no time get­ting in­to his hits. By the third song of his 30-minute set, Ky-Mani had the crowd to­tal­ly en­grossed and groov­ing to some of his late fa­ther Bob's great­est hits like Is This Love and Re­demp­tion Song.

Af­ter the hype of Ky-Mani's per­for­mance, there was an­oth­er 45-minute wait be­fore Dami­an 'Ju­nior Gong' Mar­ley graced the stage. "They are killing the vibes," one dis­ap­point­ed fan told the T&T Guardian while an­oth­er felt the pro­mot­ers could have cre­at­ed a bet­ter at­mop­sphere by in­clud­ing more lo­cal reg­gae acts. How­ev­er, an ap­par­ent diehard fan from Pe­nal-a Rasta­far­i­an with long dread­locks hang­ing loose­ly down his back and dressed in tra­di­tion­al Rasta­fari colours-felt the con­cert was aus­pi­cious oc­ca­sion. "I am hap­py to get four Mar­ley broth­ers on one stage. We are re­al for­tu­nate. This is his­to­ry and we may not get this op­por­tu­ni­ty again, so I good." At about 2.15 am, Dami­an was wel­comed with loud screams and ap­plause and he didn't dis­ap­point as he put down an en­er­getic per­for­mance. He sang old and new hits, and wowed the crowd who obeyed his every call to ac­tion as he thrilled them with his char­ac­ter­is­tic clear, crisp voice.

Dami­an was joined on­stage by his broth­ers Ju­lian and Stephen Mar­ley who both per­formed some of their own songs. Ju­lian's more re­laxed, but qual­i­ty per­for­mance, in­clud­ed songs like Hard­er Day, while Stephen sang his big hits No Cig­a­rette Smoke, Pim­pers Par­adise and Jah Army. The Mar­ley Broth­ers au­di­ence was a di­verse mix which cut across age, race and cul­ture - dread­locks ands bald heads - who all seemed cap­ti­vat­ed by the broth­ers' reg­gae mag­ic. In the weeks lead­ing up to the con­cert, there was a lot of dis­cus­sion about the ap­pro­pri­ate­ness of hav­ing a reg­gae con­cert on the eve of Trinidad and To­ba­go's 50th an­niver­sary of In­de­pen­dence. But with Ja­maica al­so re­cent­ly cel­e­brat­ing their 50th an­niver­sary, Dami­an con­grat­u­lat­ed T&T and al­so recog­nised his own coun­try's mile­stone by stat­ing; "I won­der which num­ber is more im­por­tant, 49, 51 or 50, but the most im­por­tant thing is to in­spire and cre­ate a to­geth­er­ness and uni­ty." Just be­fore the fi­nal farewell the four broth­ers hugged on stage and sang their fa­ther's clas­sic, Could You Be Loved. The con­cert fi­nal­ly end­ed at 4:38 am af­ter Dami­an sang Af­fairs of Heart and Me Name Ju­nior Gong.