As randomly chosen by survey* on Mastodon, our next spotlight is on number 973 on The List, submitted by yours truly (i.e., buffyleigh).

As I sadly so often end up doing, I often don’t catch up on an artist’s discography until after they’ve left us. And while the circumstances are sad, it can be a really beautiful experience to discover new favorite albums that I didn’t even know existed when the artist was with us. This album is one such discovery – Shuhada’ Sadaqat’s (a.k.a. Sinéad O’Connor’s) album of reggae covers.

I generally stay away from covers, especially if they’re done in the same style as the originals. But I think this entire album is so tastefully and beautifully done, Sadaqat’s respect for the material is so obvious. Introduced to reggae in her early London days via a friend who collected all the records that were on the Jamaican charts, and then becoming a fly on the wall of a record shop owned and frequented by old Jamaicans,** Sadaqat connected deeply with the Rastafari community, seeing parallels between their struggles and those of the Irish people, as well as how she approached her own beliefs. As she wrote in the liner notes:

Thanks first and foremost to the great men who wrote and performed these songs and whose inspiration has kept me nourished with strength at times when I might otherwise have lost faith in myself. These men were part of a battle fought for self esteem and for the freeing of God from religion. As such, they are my heroes, my teachers, my masters, my priests, my prophets, my guides and my godfathers. And I could never in a million words or years, express the love and gratitude I feel toward them, for the truth and rights which they benevolently taught through music and which raised God from the dead in the soul of a little Irish Catholic woman. Nor could I express the influence they have had on my own singing and songwriting. The originals of these songs can never be bettered, and so all I can hope in recording them, is to honour the composers and pass on their teachings…

Throw Down Your Arms was recorded in Jamaica and was produced by the amazing duo Sly & Robbie (i.e., Sly Dunbar and Robbie Shakespeare), who also played drums and bass on the album. Nearly half of the album is Burning Spear covers,*** the others covers of The Abyssinians, Junior Byles, Devon Irons, Israel Vibration, Peter Tosh, and Buju Banton, ending with Bob Marley & The Wailers’ “War” (which she had previously covered in the infamous 1992 Saturday Night Live performance). Sadaqat personally payed for the majority of the record herself and donated 10% of the profits to Rasta elders in Jamaica.

A physical copy of the album is a bit hard to track down but, if you can, try to get the double-disc version – the second disc is a really fantastic dub version of the album, which I tend to prefer. A Youtube link to the dub version is also below, hopefully it works for you.

Happy listening and, Shuhada’ Sadaqat, may you rest in peace.

• Songlink: Sinéad O’Connor – Throw Down Your Arms
• Youtube: Sinéad O’Connor – Throw Down Your Arms (dub version)
• Discogs: Sinéad O’Connor – Throw Down Your Arms

*The survey choices that led to this spotlight were “If you walk with Jesus”, “He’s gonna save your soul”, “You gotta keep the devil”, and “Way down in the hole”, following the earlier survey that had “When you walk through the garden”, “You gotta watch your back”, “Well, I beg your pardon”, and “Walk the straight and narrow track”. The fourth phrase was the winning selection, so the survey result was translated as picking the fourth album in The List with one of the phrase’s words in the title, the matching word here being “down”.
**See the chapter called “A Lesson or Two” in her memoir, Rememberings (which I highly recommend), published under the name Sinéad O’Connor.
***5 of the 12 songs are from Burning Spear. If you haven’t already, check out our earlier spotlight on Burning Spear’s Marcus Garvey, an album I actually discovered via Throw Down Your Arms (because I’m always doing these things backwards, lol).

https://1001otheralbums.com/2024/08/21/sinead-oconnor-throw-down-your-arms-2005-ireland/