Burning Spear releases his new CD Our Music on his own record label Burning Spear aka. Winston Rodney has released dozens of albums, toured the world many times over, and played before more audiences than anyone else in the history of the genre. Indeed, if Bob Marley was the first artist to bring reggae to the attention of international audiences, Burning Spear’s relentless recording and touring have kept it there. Burning Spear’s music—thus, his life—has inspired people the world over since 1969. From the beginning, his songs have implored listeners to fight oppression in all its forms, to work at improving the lives of themselves and their community and to be aware of the social impact of their actions.

The new CD, Our Music, is Burning Spear’s reclamation of his own artistry—a justification for establishing his record company and a challenge to all artists to commander their own future.

With his art and his business now firmly in his own control, Burning Spear’s OUR MUSIC stands among the most joyful albums of his career. Beautifully played, mixed, and engineered, OUR MUSIC sounds more like classic ’70s fare than anything that Burning Spear has released in well over a decade. Each track bubbles with heavy bass, reverb, and organ, and each contains the emphatic echo of the incomparable Burning Brass horn section as well as a melody for which any DJ surely would die to obtain.

Lyrically and musically, Spear is an idealist, but he’s also a person who demonstrates a work ethic that is unsurpassed in show business. He takes his relationship with his audience very seriously because, as he explained, "I have these people always being there for me and reaching out for what I am presenting to them.”

“What I tried to do with this album, musically and lyrically, is to go back to the ‘70s, when we were singin’ about the history and the culture and the lifestyle of our people,” Burning Spear observes. “A lot of early Burning Spear songs were seen as political. To me, it’s just a natural thing. As an artist, I just expressed that.”

Anyone who has seen a Burning Spear concert can tell you that when it comes to giving an audience what they need, no one can do it better than Spear can. There are few opportunities for transcendence in western society, and Spear’s shamanic performances — part gospel, part call-to-revolution, and totally healing — are what going to church ought be like. "You have to have that sense of responsibility because it’s a job, an important work. I know that I’m going to be working for these people for an hour and a half, or two hours, or more. So, I have to do what I do best, and be there the way I should be there so that they see and feel what I am doing for them," he explained.Even though many of his lyrics are about black cultural heroes such as Marcus Garvey, Paul Bogle, Malcolm X, and Martin Luther King, he rejects any insinuation that his music is exclusionary and directed at only one community. "I am the people’s singer, you know. When I talk about the people, I’m not the kind of individualist who just chooses to talk about some people. When I use the word "people," I mean all the people of the world regardless of color, nation, religion, or whatever it is. It is just people. I see people as plain, natural people,"Spear has traveled a long way since those early days when he first became a rastaman and played his bongos .. Largo beach, but aspects of his journey to fame still mystify him. "If I should really get the full understanding about the amount of different people who have been supporting me, maybe I couldn’t even deal with it. I would ask myself the question, ‘Could it be true that so many people are listening to Burning Spear?

The answer, of course, is "yes;" and the reasons are obvious. Burning Spear is a living cultural treasure, a torch bearer for a proud African heritage, and a signpost to a rich and spiritually diverse future - a future in which the spear will hopefully keep burning bright for many years to come.