From the pit
The Roots & Rhymes Tour came to the Boston waterfront on a July night, and Leader Bank Pavilion — the tent on the Seaport with the harbor at its back — turned into a congregation. Buju Banton, Stephen Marley and Gramps Morgan on one stage is not a concert bill, it's a lineage laid end to end. Buju took the room from the gravel-and-grace of "Untold Stories" to the triumph of "Champion," and a Boston crowd that had waited years to see him gave it all back. This is a man who lost time and came home to a catalog that only got heavier in his absence; watching him work it live, you are watching survival set to a riddim. Stephen Marley carried the family name without leaning on it, the way only someone born into it can. Gramps Morgan's harmonies rolled off the tent and out over the water, lighters and phone-lights up the whole set. From the pit the Seaport lights sit behind the stage like a second audience. I shared this one — credit to Jules and Picatra working the same pit — because a night this size deserves more than one set of eyes on it. These frames are three generations of the foundation on the Boston harbor, hands up, the tent full, the culture reminding a city exactly how deep it runs.
Words & photography — Bobby Shakes