In many ways I should be grateful for the existence of Bob Marley. If it were not for his greatest hits album, Legend, most people would probably own more than one Reggae record. In acting as a one man summary for this particularly dismal form of music therefore (and then by dying too!) he has done me a favour in the world of music hating. But it just is not that simple. You see not only did Bob Marley also unfortunately make music, but he also gave birth to about four hundred children all of whom seem to be continuing this somewhat ropey legacy.
Marley was backed by the Wailers, a more apposite name for a band I have never heard. Not that they wailed in the standard wailing and gnashing sense. Rather they probably wailed internally for having to play the soporifically slow skanks that Bob served up for them. And the worst by far of these slow crawls through Rastafarian mumbo-jumbo and bass stack bothering riddims was Exodus. As Bob says: “Movement of Jah People”. I am assuming Jah People were trying to get as far away from the record as possible.
The song is quite successful in suggesting how much pain, suffering and hardship an Exodus such as the one led by Moses would be. It also manages to inflict almost as much horror as the various plagues called down in the same book of the Bible. On the one hand you have locusts, on the other you have a over produced bass guitar. I think I would prefer the insects. And that is before you get to the lyrics, in which Bob is calling for a new Moses to turn up to lead his people* from Babylon to the father land. Now forgive me if I’m wrong: but if you are considering a trip from Babylon to the Fatherland, I am not sure is Moses would be your best bet. His travel agency specialises in trips from Palestine to Egypt. For a Babylon to German package you’d be better off getting a member of Boney M.
*One assumes his extended family which could well be the entire population of Jamaica by now.