Sylford Walker’s “Burn Babylon” is the classic roots anthem from a time when men of the earth chanted about the ills of the world, and all they wanted was to be left alone.  Now, music contributes to the ills of the world by glorifying greed, violence, and the worship of all things but Jah.  Contemporary music, for the most part, has even become an essential moving part in the machine that it used to decry.
What I’m trying to say is we will never have another musical revolution like the one that occurred in Jamaica in the 1970’s.  Music will never mean that much again.
After spending his early years in rural Jamaica, Sylford Walker relocated to Kingston at the age of nine.  Walker began working with producer Glen Brown but his first releases were for producer Joe Gibbs in 1975, including the singles “Burn Babylon” and “Jah Golden Pen”, Walker drawing comparisons with Burning Spear.  His most productive period was working with Brown in the mid-late 1970s, singles from the era including “Lamb’s Bread” and “Eternal Day”.  His debut album, Lamb’s Bread, produced by Brown and mixed by King Tubby, was recorded in 1978, but not released until Greensleeves Records and Shanachie Records issued it ten years later.  In The Rough Guide to Reggae, Steve Barrow and Peter Dalton describe the tracks on the album as “minor masterpieces”.  The album’s tracks were reissued in 2000 on the critically acclaimed Blood & Fire release Lamb’s Bread International, which also included Welton Irie’s deejay versions on the same rhythm tracks.  Increased interest in Walker’s work saw the release of the Nutin Na Gwan album in 2006, which included new recordings produced by Joe Gibbs, and a string of reissue singles in the first decade of the 21st century. Walker returned to live performance, including a few European tours in 2000’s with the swiss selecter Asher Selector.

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