The new album was also the first time the Wailing Souls could take their time in constructing the music. If I love you and you love me, then we must have peace. Everybody is now going: Peace! Peace! But you cannot have peace without love. “Peace, love and happiness,” insists Matthews. “It’s the best of everything in Trenchtown: the best thief, the best gunman, the best singer, the best cricketer, the best football player.”Īgainst this background, the Wailing Souls have spent a career, and an earlier 13 independently released albums, singing songs with social and spiritual messages. If you step over this line, you end up in prison, or if you go this way, you’ll be a musician. “Everything happens there: murder, rape, and at the other side, sweet music, great sportsmen, great scholars,” adds MacDonald. Matthews compares the “oppressed community” of their shared hometown to “hell’s door. “There were like four of us that were always together, at birthday parties, anywhere.” They began recording as teen-agers in 1967, ultimately providing backing vocals for such reggae luminaries as Marley, Joe Higgs, Jimmy Cliff, Peter Tosh and others. “We have always been good brethren, even before we were partners,” says MacDonald. The two had grown up together in the blighted Trenchtown district of Kingston. They speak in warm, richly accented tones, talking contentedly of their good fortune since signing to a major record label. “We’re just trying to make things interesting.”īoth singers are relaxing in the Santa Monica offices of Columbia, both of them in beards and matching tall purple caps. “The roots are always there,” explains MacDonald. Scattered among the new album’s more contemporary tracks are such songs as “Shark Attack” that stay within reggae’s traditional boundaries. Still, the Wailing Souls say they haven’t abandoned the roots of reggae. “We found out that to get the vast majority that we want to accept the music, we have to blend the music with something extra,” he adds. It’s very hard for hard-core reggae to come out of Jamaica and sell a million. “Those guys do mostly Jamaican music, and they sell millions. “Look at a group like UB40,” says Matthews. Elements of soul, rap and rock are among the album’s ingredients, along with smooth new reggae versions of the Rolling Stones’ ‘70s-era rock ballad “Sweet Black Angel” and the folk duo Kate and Anna McGarrigle’s “Heartbeats Accelerating.” Their new style, they say, is partly designed to help broaden the popularity of the music they’ve spent their lives playing.