Marcus Garvey (album)

Marcus Garvey
Studio album by Burning Spear
Released	December 12, 1975
Recorded	1975
Genre	Reggae
Length	33:45
Label	Island
Producer	Lawrence Lindo
Burning Spear chronology
Rocking Time (1974) Marcus Garvey (1975) Garvey's Ghost (1976)
Alternative cover
Jamaican release cover

Marcus Garvey is the third album by reggae artist Burning Spear, released in 1975 on Fox Records in Jamaica and then internationally on Island Records later in the year. The album is named after the Jamaican National Hero and Rastafari movement prophet Marcus Garvey. A dub version of it was released four months later as Garvey's Ghost.

This was the first album by Burning Spear recorded for producer Lawrence Lindo, better known by his handle taken from the assassin of Lee Harvey Oswald, Jack Ruby. Apparently, Lindo and Burning Spear realized the opening track to this album, "Marcus Garvey", on their first meeting.^[1] Island Records, whose founder Chris Blackwell had been instrumental in breaking Jamaican reggae artists Jimmy Cliff, Toots and the Maytals, and Bob Marley to an international audience, then made a deal to release it internationally, but believed the original Jamaican mix of the album to be too threatening, or at least too commercially unviable, for white audiences and therefore remixed it into what they considered a more palatable form,^[2] outraging him.^[3] The Jamaican release also does not include the final track, "Resting Place",^[4] which had only been issued as a single there.^[5] The backing musicians, whom Lindo named the Black Disciples, had been assembled from the Soul Syndicate and the Wailers.^[6]

On July 27, 2010, this album was remastered and released by Universal's Hip-O Records reissue imprint in tandem with the dub version on one compact disc.

The album was listed in the 1999 book The Rough Guide: Reggae: 100 Essential CDs.^[7]