The Ultimate Guide to Great Reggae - The complete story of Reggae told through its greatest songs, famous and forgotten - Michael Garnice
More great Nyabinghi and Nyabinghi-reggae songs
The Ultimate Guide to Great Reggae - The complete story of Reggae told through its greatest songs, famous and forgotten - Michael Garnice
Michael Garnice [+]
Freelance writer
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Description
Well before they began to record, Count Ossie and his Nyabinghi drum troupe were born of – and would become central to – Rasta identity. Oswald Williams was born in 1926 in Saint Thomas Parish. Mentored in Rastafarianism and Nyabinghi drumming by a Rasta elder by the name of Brother Job, the young Williams would soon move to live in a Rasta community. By the late 1950s, Jamaica’s best jazz musicians, as well as others visiting from abroad, would routinely come to Ossie’s Rasta camp. There they would sit in with him and his drum troupe, the Mystic Revelation of Rastafari, on a grounation, as these jam sessions were called. With this musical openness, it’s no wonder that Nyabinghi music frequently included a guest jazz instrument, not to mention welcoming collaboration with an entire R&B or reggae band.