Marley's Ghost ;

By Guy Garcia

There's a whiff of ganja in the air as Ziggy Marley and the Melody Makers take the stage of Manhattan's Academy theater under a backdrop of painted African masks. The band launches into a chugging Jamaican groove, and the young crowd that has filled the house churns and bobs to the buoyant, upside- down beat. Midway through the show the Melody Makers break into an impassioned rendition of the Bob Marley classic I Shot the Sheriff and then segue into the blistering grind of Head Top, from their strong new album Joy and Blues. As Ziggy, 24, rekindles his father's musical spirit and links it to the throbbing rhythms of the '90s, the listeners cheer and raise their arms in a sign of Rastafarian affirmation. "I always do a few of my father's songs," says Marley, who is touring the U.S. and Europe. "His music is a part of me. It's the same meaning, the same message."

It is a message people are again ready to hear. After a slump that lasted for most of the '80s, reggae is thriving in the studio, on the charts and onstage, spawning a host of hybrids and new stars as it fuses with rap, soul and pop. UB40's Can't Help Falling in Love, an infectious remake of Elvis Presley's 1961 hit, was No. 1 on Billboard's Hot 100 singles chart for the past seven weeks. Also in the Hot 100: Oh Carolina, by dancehall sensation Shaggy, and Bad Boys, a 1986 Inner Circle tune that has found new life as the theme song of the TV series Cops. Earlier this year, Twelve Inches of Snow, the debut album by the Canadian singer Snow, became the first reggae record to top the U.S. pop-music charts, and it stayed there for eight weeks. Billboard, acknowledging reggae's new commercial vitality, has inaugurated a reggae Top 25 chart.

Anyone looking for more proof of the revival need only check out the history of Legend, a compilation of songs by Bob Marley and the Wailers. Sales of the album, released in 1984, have recently surged. The record has dominated Billboard's Top Pop Catalog album chart for an unprecedented 17 weeks, outdrawing such heavyweights as Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon, Michael Jackson's Thriller and the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.

Why is this music suddenly so fashionable again? "Reggae has been big on college campuses for more than a decade," says Timothy White, Billboard's editor and author of Catch a Fire: The Life of Bob Marley. "But a number of forces seem to be converging now. You have more and more people becoming more aware of the complexity and diversity of our culture -- and with that is the awareness that reggae is a lot broader and deeper than they previously thought."

It was Bob Marley, a poor Jamaican from Kingston's Trenchtown slum, who brought reggae to international prominence in the '70s with his albums Catch a Fire, Rastaman Vibration and Exodus. An outspoken champion of racial equality and social justice, Marley was also a tireless promoter of Rastafarianism, the pro-African sect whose followers grow their hair into long, matted dreadlocks and smoke marijuana, or ganja, as part of a religious rite.

After Marley died of a brain tumor in 1981 at 36, a new generation of Trenchtown youths began to forge a harder, denser style of reggae called dancehall. Reflecting the desperate times in Kingston's ghettos, dancehall lyrics were charged with angry diatribes glorifying guns, drugs and sex, and sung often in a fast, talky style called "toasting." On Minute to Pray, Mad Cobra warns, "Original bad boy have no mercy/ Original bad boy run the country/ Them get a minute to pray and a second to die . . . We no miss the target."

By the late '80s, dancehall had reached the U.S., where it found its audience in the growing legions of hip-hop fans who earlier had been put off by reggae's relatively laid-back vibes. Armed with hip-hop's sexually suggestive stance and a souped-up, aggressive beat, dancehall performers like Snow, Shabba Ranks and Shaggy have reinvigorated the music and muscled their way up the U.S. charts.

"Dancehall has a real excitement and tension to it," says Chris Blackwell, the founder of Island Records, who signed Bob Marley to the label in 1972. Says Tiger, whose dancehall album, Claws of the Cat, was just released: "It's not just the roots and Rastafarian thing anymore."

As dancehall moves deeper into the mainstream, adventurous musicians are blending its syncopated beat with hard-core rap, funk and even techno. "Dancehall has been like a fertilizer," says Maxine Stowe, an executive at Columbia Records. Still, there are those who wonder if the style may have reached its creative peak. "I don't expect dancehall will have the longevity of the early roots music," says Blackwell. Maybe not, but diehards can take heart from Bob Marley, who may have uttered the last word on reggae when he sang, "Check out the real situation . . . No one can stop them now!"

With reporting by David E. Thigpen/New York