Jamaicans pay tribute to the other Bob - Dylan

Jamaican musicians have recorded a tribute album to Bob Dylan, playing some of the American folk legend’s most well-known songs in reggae style.

The album, Is It Rolling, Bob, includes 16 songs recorded by veteran musicians like singer Beres Hammond, and new-wave roots groups like Sizzla, said Gary Himelfarb, head of Washington DC-based RAS Records.

“Bob Dylan has always been one of my favourite artists,” Himelfarb said. “He was a voice of the oppressed in the 1960s, just like Bob Marley was the voice of the oppressed in the 1970s.”

Although the album will not be released in the United States and Europe until June, three songs are playing already in Jamaica, including Subterranean Homesick Blues by Sizzla, Knocking On Heaven’s Door by Luciano and Just Like a Woman by Hammond.

Recording took place over the last nine months in Jamaica’s capital, Kingston, as well as in London and Washington DC.

Other musicians featured on the album include former Wailers guitarist Earl Smith, roots-reggae singers Don Carlos and Apple Gabriel, and drummer Sly Dunbar, who played with Dylan when he experimented with reggae on his 1983 Infidels album.