Being at the Niagara Falls, must be quite an immersive experience. Even with the cultural baggage of movie flashbacks. And the American way of colouring. It’s not so far away from the experience of old, beloved Reggae records: stone-cold classics, full of heat, love, and surrender. Being blown away in front of a famous waterfall, or on a „Jah-Maican“ time travel experience, nevermind!
So every Manafonista might leave his or her marks by adding to this mini-series of „20 reggae underground classics“ (if possible, let us not too often mention the usual suspects) – treasures that should never end in desolate areas of record collections. The first record must be a killer, and it is. For the first time I heard this album at the end of the last century, during a party of Reggae- and Dub-fanatics in Düsseldorf. I’m talking about Dadawah‘s brooding, strung-out masterpiece of nyabinghi (Rastafarian spiritual music), „Peace And Love“! You don’t know it? Do yourself a favour! Originally released in 1974 on „Wild Flower“, it was repressed in ’75 by Trojan with different artwork. The two Reggae afficionados Ainley and Ernestus have had the tracks remastered at Abbey Road for the Dug Out edition, the vinyl housed in “old-school, hand-assembled sleeves” with original cover art restored. I’ll let Honest Jon’s explain the unique appeal of the record:
„Led by Ras Michael over four extended excursions, the music is organic, sublime and expansive, grounation-drums and bass heavy (with no rhythm guitar, rather Willie Lindo brilliantly improvising a kind of dazed, harmolodic blues). Lloyd Charmers and Federal engineer George Raymond stayed up all night after the session, to mix the recording, opening out the enraptured mood into echoing space, adding sparse, startling effects to the keyboards. At no cost to its deep spirituality, this is the closest reggae comes to psychedelia.“