Wailers: keep on moving

The soothing, laid-back reggae rhythms of the Wailers are tailor-made for a live show under the stars at the Irish Village in Dubai on May 21. It’s also fitting that the music of the band’s former charismatic leader Bob Marley should be celebrated in what would have been his 70th year if his life had not been cruelly cut short at the age of 36 by cancer.

The man primarily responsible for keeping Bob’s music and spirit alive is Aston ‘Family Man’ Barrett. The only original Wailer in the current line-up who, along with his late brother Carlton, provided the tight drum and bass unit that helped define the Wailers’ sound in the early days and led to worldwide hits such as No Woman, No Cry, Buffalo Soldier and Iron Lion Zion.

Aston first met Bob in the sixties. He recalled: ‘It was In Kingston Jamaica and I remember seeing two or three guys walking down Orange St and North Parade and then a friend of mine said: ‘You see the brother over there, that’s Bob Marley’, and then later on that day my friend told me that he had got a message for me. I was wanted for a session. Not just me but my brother Carlton too and that was the beginning.’

Bob had formed the Wailers with Peter Tosh and Bunny Wailer after a disappointing solo career, but with the arrival of the Carlton brothers the band began to notch up a string of hits such as Simmer Down, Stir it Up and Trenchtown Rock, quickly turning them into one of Jamaica’s hottest acts with international success beckoning.

The personnel was to receive a further shake-up in the mid-seventies with the shock departure of Bunny and Peter but the band played on under the new moniker of Bob Marley and the Wailers. Many new members were added.

Aston explained: ‘It was the early years of my musical career, when we were getting it together and meeting other people but I was the one who put most of the musicians together.’

By this time the band had cut a deal with Island Records, run by Chris Blackwell, who believed that with Bob’s magnetism, musical talent and rabble-rousing lyrics, the band could be marketed successfully to white audiences in Europe and North America.

But the big breakthrough took three years when the seminal album Exodus was released in 1977 while Marley was in self-imposed exile in London following a failed assassination attempt in Jamaica a year earlier. Exodus, widely regarded as Marley’s finest album, produced songs that are still regularly heard on radio stations today such as Jamming, Waiting in Vain, Three Little Birds and One love.

Marley’s music was now known and loved around the globe and became a powerful symbol for social change and political freedom, particularly in Africa and his native Caribbean, but having survived an assassin’s bullet he was now faced with a new and deadlier enemy – malignant melanoma. A type of skin cancer that initially attacked Marley’s big toe but eventually spread to the rest of his body when he refused to have it amputated. Ironically, melanoma is more common amongst Caucasian people who are over-exposed to the sun, rather than people of African descent but while Marley’s mother Cedella was Black, his father, Norval was a white English-Jamaican, hailing from Sussex.

Marley lost his battle with cancer in 1981 after suffering the final indignation of losing his famous dreadlocks, a key part of his Rastafarian beliefs, due to the cancer treatment. His final words allegedly said to his son Ziggy, one of eleven children, were: ‘Money can’t buy you life.’

There was a lull in the activities of the Wailers before Aston picked up the reins again after deciding that the show must go on: ‘We hit the road with Bob from 1972 straight up until his passing but then there was a period of mourning before we went on the road again.’ He added proudly: ‘I was voluntarily chosen to come on Earth for this musical mission.’

One of the biggest challenges for the band was to find a replacement singer. An impossible task in many people’s eyes – until Dwayne Anglin arrived on the scene. The vocalist nicknamed ‘Danglin’ does an extraordinary job of interpreting Marley’s songs and is a dynamic frontman who connects effortlessly with audiences.

He told Friday magazine that he didn’t have to perfect Marley’s style. It came quite naturally. ‘We just so happen to have a similar frequency; therefore when I’m performing his songs it just naturally sounds like him. I was too young to see him play but I have watched most of the available clips of him performing. I know it’s not the same but it’s the closest I’ll ever get to the real thing.’

There is a special bond with the man who was the subject of a highly acclaimed film biopic directed by Kevin Macdonald in 2012. ‘I feel a connection with his music. He was a very special person. His passion for music, his commitment to Rastafari, and of course his ability to put into song what everyone else was thinking. The mood and the message keeps the music alive.

‘If Marley were still alive today, I can’t imagine him doing anything else, but Rasta Music.’

The band must have performed these songs thousands of times before but there is no sign of fatigue setting in. Said Danglin: ‘The message in the music is too relevant and important to the people. As long as there is a need for the music, we are willing to supply it. Family Man is always working on new tracks but we will just have to wait and see what the legendary bass player has up his sleeve!’

At 68 years old Aston is still as active as ever and has no plans to retire. ‘I am not ready to hang up my gloves or throw in my towel,’ he says defiantly. ‘Reggae music is the heartbeat of the people. The universal voice what carries the messages of roots, culture and reality. My plan is still for the music and message to be heard in the four corners of the earth.’