It's not that tough to get a crowd of music fans dancing. It's getting them to think while they're dancing that's the trick. When Ziggy Marley plays Vancouver's Vogue Theatre on Tuesday, he's hoping to get people doing both.

"Fans can expect an experience that is more than entertainment," he explains. "Hopefully it will have some impact of them more than ‘that was an entertaining show'. I don't have fireworks. I don't have props. I don't have 100 people dancing. It's just music with soul and spirit."

Marley speaks from experience. The 42-year old has been making music since his teens, and has successfully stepped out from the enormous shadow cast by his father, reggae legend Bob Marley, to become an iconic figure himself. Still, the obvious comparison for the five-time Grammy Award-winner, who looks, sounds and writes songs like his father, isn't something Marley Junior has ever fought against. It's not a responsibility to Bob Marley's legacy that drives Ziggy. It's something deeper.

"I feel that I have to keep lifting him up," he continues. "He's my father. Besides being loved by a lot of people, he's loved by me. I want to show that love all the time. It's not about responsibility, it's about love."

Having released his fourth solo album, ‘Wild and Free,' this summer, 26 years after his first release as part of The Melody Makers, Marley is acutely aware of the huge changes that have swept through the music industry.

"Growing up around my father I was lucky to experience and see the influence that the music of that generation had. It affected the consciousness and spirituality of people. It gave people hope from oppression. The thing I've seen is that music has become less about substance and more about image. Instead of being something you hear, music has become something you look at. A lot of the music out there is packaged with imagery of glamour and materialism.

"It's like a circus. You have the clown that makes people laugh. But you also have the guy who walks on the tightrope. The music of today to me is like the clown. He's there's to entertain, but the tightrope guy is the serious stuff. The clown has his purpose. But everyone is focus sing on the clown and missing the tightrope guy. The clown has become the main attraction. I'm not condemning the clown. They have their place. We just want our substance stuff to have its fair share."

The irony that political music has disappeared from the airwaves in these highly politicized days isn't lost on Marley. Scanning the radio dial, his father's voice, imploring his generation to ‘Stand up for your rights', is never far away. Marley would have more right than most to bemoan the trivialization of music, but his work, especially on ‘Wild and Free', is alive with joy and optimism.

"Optimism comes from having a positive outlook on things," he insists. "I don't make a decision to write songs like that. It's who I am as a person. We have to fight the negative with the positive, fight hate with love.

"Love is the answer. It's easy to fall into the trap of lack of optimism. That's what feeds the machine, this beast, this oppression of people and oppression of positivity and optimism. Fear is what works for them. Somebody has to have the answer. This is my job, my work. This is our role and the part we play in this world."

It's nearly 40 years since Bob Marley sang, "Don't give up the fight". For Ziggy, spreading optimism and walking the tightrope, those words have become second nature.

"We're not even fighting," he laughs. "We're just doing what we do."

Ziggy Marley plays The Vogue Theatre in Vancouver on September 27th.