Ras Michael - Dadawah - Peace & Love / Nyahbinghi

Nyahbingi music in its purest form ist the music played at Rastafarian meetings or "grounations", and is based around a style of relentless drumming and chanting. Sometimes a guitar or horns are used, but no amplification at all is employed.

Though serious musicologists had made occasional field recordings of nyahbingi sessions, the first album to give the music the studio time it deserved, while remaining as true to its original forms are possible, was the triple LP set "Grounation" from Count Ossie & The Mystic Revelation Of Rastafari. This historic set has never been superseded, but the establishment of Rastafari as the dominant reggae ideology in the mid-1970s, plus the emergence of an audience for reggae albums that were more than collections of hit singles, created a climate in which more sets of nyabingi-based music could be produced.

The most noteworthy of these were by Ras Michael & The Sons Of Negus. In 1975, Ras Michael´s group were joined by some of Kingston´s top studio musicians for the retrieving album "Dadawah - Peace & Love". Unique in its synthesis of musical forms and the length of its tracks, it uses traditional Rasta chants as its basic material, but subjects it to elements from the reggae mainstream, US funk and even rock.

Here are Ras Michael´s first two albums "Dadawah - Peace & Love" and "Nyahbinghi" together on one CD. It is one of our favourite albums for the more quiet and thoughtful hours of the day:

Ras Michael - Dadawah - Peace & Love / Nyahbinghi
(256 kbps, cover art included)

You can listen to an interview with Ras Michael on http://www.ireggae.com/rasmichael.htm (real player audio).
More infos about nyahbinghi can be found on http://www.rhythmweb.com/jamaica/nyabinghi.htm .