Bunny Wailer

Bunny Wailer has started the digital reissue of his extensive catalogue with the famed Blackheart Man, but he is not resting on the musical laurels he has long earned.

He is coming out with a trio of new albums, each with a different focus. Wailer tells The Sunday Gleaner that Cross Culture is "a little of this and a little of that, as far as the international marketplace and the flavour that the people have been accustomed to where R&B is concerned and rap is concerned and a little hip-hop is concerned".

Then there is Combination, on which Wailer teams up with 11 women, doing a single track with each. Among the ladies Wailer combines with are Sister Carol, Angie Angel, Lady Patra, Ruffian and Macka Diamond. Wailer believes this approach to the duet has never been done before. "I think this is something like Bunny Wailer, because you know Bunny Wailer always like to come up with something like this," he said.

"It's out there and it's getting some good reviews," Wailer told The Sunday Gleaner, explaining that Combination has been released digitally. Cross Culture will be released shortly.

However, it is the third album, Unite, also not yet released in digital format, which really seems to stir his passions. "That album is a very serious political statement," he says. "Unity is the only area of recovery from what we are experiencing presently in Jamaica, violence and crime and gun crime and people killing each other for no reason. And then the people who are the ones who planted the seed seem to be disassociating themselves from the ugly fruit that is bearing, which is very very unfair."

ERRORS IN OUR LIVES

Among the songs on Unite are National Errors of Jamaica. "We have national heroes but you have errors, who are the so-called politicians who are errors in our lives. So I made a song about the 'National Errors of Jamaica'. Them not dealing with Nanny, them not dealing with Bogle, them not dealing with Marcus, them not dealing with Sam Sharpe, them not dealing with William Gordon, them not dealing with Norman Manley and them not dealing with Bustamante, make them national errors of Jamaica," Wailer says emphatically.

Revolutionary Like Me speaks to not standing back and watching the people being sent back into political slavery. Another song advises "lock it and stock it in a barrel and put it down for the revolution". Emphasising that Unite is a really serious album, Wailer points to the titles of the songs - Real Bad Man, Revolutionaries, In The Ghetto, Political Slavery and Condom and AIDS. There is also Place called Zion, which Wailer says is in the vein of the love song, Dreamland.

"Overall, it is a very controversial statement that is really going to be understood by people who are going through this kind of a situation that we Jamaican people are going through. And I think the people are ready," he said.

"The album title is Unite, not to go out there and make trouble and mash up the place, but to unite which is the greatest weapon to be victorious over disunity, which creates a lot of conflict, war, more war, vengeance, grudge and hate. And we are just one people. As we say, we are out of many one people, so we can't be living in anything other than unity to be expressing the one people we are," Wailer said.

"They say silence means consent, so this album is Bunny Wailer making some noise to say that he is not in this foolishness that is going on."