Every Little Thing Gonna Be Alright (33 page)

DAVIS:
Why does preaching play such a strong role in reggae, especially in your music?

TOSH:
Well, mon, that is coming from my Father’s message chamber, seen? I preach, yes mon, but I do not judge. No man is here to look upon what another man is doing. “Judge not, lest ye be judged.” I say, make sure your doings are right, so that when the payday comes around, what you get in your envelope will be satisfactory. You nuh seen?

DAV I S :
Why have so many cultural explosions—reggae, Rastas, ganja—come from Jamaica?

TOSH:
Because we are the prophets of this Earth. We are they who were executed by Alexander the blood-clot Great and those great pirates who used to go round and chop off the saints’ heads. All these things are revealed between the lines, through the Third Eye. I&I see ourselves as the reincarnated souls of those carried off into slavery.

DAVIS:
Are you suprised by the dramatic acceptance of reggae over the last few years?

TOSH:
It was prophesied, my brother. Only fools are surprised at the manifestations of prophecy. Seen? Only those who cannot see between the lines will be surprised.

DAVIS:
What about the future of reggae?

TOSH:
Yes mon. Fifteen years from now, there will be a different dispensation of time. The shitstem will no longer be. All the places that are built upon corruption shall be torn down and shall be no more upon the face of creation. Yes mon! Five years from now will be a different age! Five years from blood clot now—will be
totally different
. No wicked left on the Earth. By 1983, Africa will be free!

H
e is the last living Wailer and, to hear Neville O’Riley Living-stone tell it, he always expected fate would treat him so.

For Livingstone—better known for the last two decades as Bunny Wailer—there is something almost prophetic about having outlasted Bob Marley and Peter Tosh, the vocal partners with whom he rode reggae music from the government yards of Trenchtown, Jamaica, to international stardom in the early 1970s.

Now 43, the diminutive singer has passed a full 17 years since taking his leave from those original Wailers for largely unexplained reasons, at a critical moment when Marley and band were in the process of becoming World Music’s first serious incursion into the realm of Western pop.

Time has been kinder to Marley, whose legend as a musical flash-point against global oppression has grown exponentially since he died of melanomic cancer in 1981.

Tosh, too, aggressively sought and achieved solo fame with his own strident reggae spin before being gunned down by a gang of motorcycle bandits at his Kingston, Jamaica, home in 1987.

But if Wailer’s ensuing work has amounted to something of a footnote to that of his more celebrated colleagues, it is a footnote of considerable and consistent influence.

Named one of the three most important musicians in the Third World by
Newsweek
magazine shortly after Marley’s death (Brazil’s Milton Nascimento and Nigeria’s King Sunny Ade shared the honors), Wailer’s post-Marley music, if sporadic, has held firmly to the same moral high ground from whence the socially conscious group came.

Interestingly, Bunny Wailer’s own songs of freedom are ringing loudly these days; louder, some would argue, than the music’s heir-apparent Ziggy Marley, the eldest of Marley’s sons, who has himself been groomed by Virgin Records to resuscitate reggae’s waning influence over Western pop.

Last year—following a stunning headline set at Jamaica’s 1987 Reggae Sunsplash festival that by all accounts stole much of Ziggy’s thunder—the reclusive Wailer galvanized his audience with a new album,
Liberation
.

The release was hailed as an uncompromising return to roots-conscious reggae, anchored by lyrics that foretold eerily of such events as the tumbling Berlin Wall and the release of jailed African National Congress leader Nelson Mandela.

A rare live airing of the singer’s music will be available tomorrow night at Toronto’s Varsity Arena, as Wailer delivers his first-ever concert in Canada, complete with a 22-piece “Reggaestra”.

During a press conference this week at the Bam Boo club and earlier, in a telephone interview from Jamaica, Wailer reaffirmed a pledge to make his “long overdue” Canadian debut “something greater than tongue can tell.”

All of Wailer’s words, it should be noted, come couched in the rhetoric of Rastafari, the Jamaican movement that recognizes the late Ethiopian emperor Haile Selassie as the black messiah, but delivers its Word in elliptical patois that will regularly confound the linear Western mind. Asked if he lives in Kingston, for example, Wailer responds with booming portent, “I live inside of myself . . . anywhere.”

Asked if he has ever been to Africa, his answer is an elusive “I am Africa.”

Wailer speaks more directly to the reasons for his renewed interest in performance, after so many years of hermitic living.

“I believe that the one who lives longest will see the most, and tell the most, and now is my time.

“I see that every nation is struggling for liberation of some sort.

“We saw the wall of Berlin fall, we saw Mandela freed, we see apartheid being dismantled, we see ladies struggling for liberation from abortion, from the instruments of destruction that take away their purpose for being here.

“There is an international liberation going on, and we’ve come too far to turn back now.”

Born in the country village of Nine Miles, St. Ann’s Parish (province), Wailer and Bob Marley were casual pals almost from the time they could walk.

Their friendship flourished—and took on a musical dimension—in the early ’60s when the pair moved with their parents to the impov- erished government housing project Trenchtown, a squatter settlement on the western outskirts of Kingston.

By 1964, as Jamaican pop music was slowing down from the clipped rhythms of ska to rock-steady (straight 4/4 time, with percussive emphasis on the second and fourth beats), Wailer and Marley had taken to harmonizing versions of early American R & B hits by groups such as the Drifters, the Moonglows and the Impressions, accompanying themselves on a homemade acoustic guitar.

A lanky third from the Trenchtown yard, Peter Tosh, soon joined the jams, reportedly by virtue of owning a real guitar.

The Wailing Wailers were born, and that year launched the ska single “Simmer Down” as the first in a string of successful but financially unrewarding recordings cut at nearby Studio One, under the tutelage of popular Jamaican deejay Clement “Sir Coxsone” Dodd.

They were a menacing trio, crowned with knit wool tams and fast adapting to the rebellious “rude boy” culture that was sweeping the yard’s downtrodden youth population. Three years and one hiatus later (Marley worked briefly on an assembly line in Wilmington, Delaware; Wailer was jailed for possession of marijuana under Jamaica’s strict narcotics laws), the group reformed with a new-found interest in Rastafari.

The era gave rise to classic Wailer/Marley collaborations such as “One Love” and “Who Feels It Knows It”, while Wailer himself branched out to sing lead on his own songs—“Dreamland”, “Dancing Shoes” and even a cover of Bob Dylan’s “Like A Rolling Stone”.

Today, Wailer will recall only positive vibrations, including the group’s standard-setting recordings with producer Lee “Scratch” Perry at the turn of the ’70s.

But he bristles at the mention of Island Records’ owner Chris Blackwell, with whom the Wailers signed in 1972, setting the stage for the groundbreaking
Catch A Fire
and
Burnin’
albums.

Those records contained such politically charged classics as “Get Up, Stand Up” and “I Shot The Sheriff” (soon to become a worldwide smash via the bluesifying hands of Eric Clapton), paving the way for Marley’s pending superstardom.

“I saw destruction ahead,” Wailer says tersely, when asked of those troubled days.

“I saw hurt for a lot of people, because the plan was wrong. The direction Blackwell was setting was like taking a fish and putting him in the goddamn oven to survive.

“I was too conscious and aware for that. I was way ahead of their plan.

“A lot of things could have been avoided. If Bob and Peter had taken my direction and gone back home, they’d be here today. Alive. “The fact that I am here and they are not is proof enough for me. I miss them, but that is what we have today.”

When pressed, Wailer won’t put specifics to his bizarre innuendo; in any event, the departure of Wailer and Tosh in 1974—they were supplanted by the introduction of the I-Threes (Judy Mowatt, Marcia Griffiths and Marley’s wife, Rita) as Marley’s new harmony squad—is regarded by many as the end of the Wailers’ truest fire.

Says Toronto broadcaster/commentator Milton Blake, host of the weekly Musical Triangle on Toronto campus station CKLN-FM (88.1): “Ultimately, Bunny’s reasons for leaving are something only he can explain, but you have to respect the fact that he turned his back on certain fame to stand for his principles.”

But Blake, a former radio host with the Jamaican Broadcasting System in the early to mid-’70s, says Wailer’s prolonged absence from the spotlight may in itself point to a simpler explanation.

“It’s particularly interesting that Bunny has waited so long to return. The fact is that the mystique of the Wailers has long outlived the group itself and, because of it, he could’ve translated that into megabucks a long time ago.

“Maybe he just wanted to stay in Jamaica.”

If it was homesickness that took Wailer home in 1973, he has clearly overcome the sensation in 1990.

The latter-day Wailer, trumped up with confidence, sounds virtually bursting to snatch the grail of reggae he so handily passed on a generation ago.

“It is dangerous to think that reggae is the responsibility of one individual. I don’t see it that way. I am just a part of the shoulder that the music rests upon.

“But, as an artist who deals with the prophesies and links with history, I see these things and I have a need to tell them.

“I’m not saying it’s supernatural—anyone who follows the same route will arrive at the same conclusion.

“Even Nostradamus didn’t prophesize events, he just happened to be paying attention to the signs of his times and he related to it. If you’re alert and you study, you will find it.”

Wailer’s message for now—and the next few years—calls for a continuation of world liberation, where eventually “people will embrace each other for what they are.

“We went through a time of building walls, we went to the limits of hating and destroying each other, so where else can we go but to a point where mankind will be born anew.

“We will tear down and embrace each other for what we are.”

Wailer has finished work on two separate album projects, both slated for release on New Jersey-based Shanachie Records. One,
Just Be Nice
, is Wailer’s gesture to youth, incorporating hip-hop, R & B/disco, and technology-driven dance patterns.

The other,
Gumption
, he describes as a continuation of the lyrically low-cal dancehall experiments he dabbled in at the turn of the ’80s with his
Rock ’N’ Groove
LP.

“You can’t give children an adult’s food—it will hurt them—so instead you must give them lollipops and candy.
Just Be Nice
is very childish, but very educational, and is meant to depict the new generation and what they’re into.

“‘Gumption,’” Wailer continues, “deals with dance hall because that situation needs direction right now. The reggae dance hall children are in confusion at this time, they don’t know where they want to go. “You have to use their language, but if you do, you can get beyond the formulas and give them something that says more than, ‘I love you, baby,’ and, ‘Darlin’ I need you’.

“In this world of market and commerce, it doesn’t pay to have one kind of stock. You’ll stagnate and be run out of the market.

“On top of reggae music being the Bible of our times, the direction of our times, it has different ranges, different levels. You could go on playing reggae music for years and years and just play hard messages, and then you could play reggae music for another decade and do just lover’s rock. Then another decade of hard-core dance hall stuff.