As he never sought after commercial success, and very rarely toured, Pablo never received the recognition that some of his more famous countrymen accrued. Now, nearly 10 years after his death of a rare nerve disorder, that might just change with the release of The Mystic World Of Augustus Pablo: The Rockers Story, a four CD and single DVD box set by his American distributor, Shanachie Entertainment Group.
The first three CDs of the set are an exhaustive retrospective of his career with samples from the three decades of his output as a producer, composer, and performer. The fourth CD features cuts that were previously unreleased and tracks that had been released on labels other than his own from his early days as a performer. The DVD contains footage from two concerts in Japan in 1986 and 1988, and some taken of Augustus during the filming of a documentary about the band Soul Syndicate called Word, Sound, and Power
The first thing you notice when listening to an Augustus Pablo song is that the lead instrument isn't one you can quite recognize. It sounds sort of like an accordion, or maybe a harmonica, but it turns out to be a melodica. Usually considered a children's toy, a melodica is a small keyboard with a mouthpiece at one end through which the player blows while shaping the notes with the keys. This almost whisper of sound floats over top the heavy, slow, bottom end of the "rockers" sound, giving it an ethereal quality more reminiscent of the East than anything that ever came out of Africa or Jamaica.
Augustus is credited with creating the trademark rockers' sound, the slow and heavy reggae sound that we've all become familiar with now but was only coming into common usage in the early '70s. The name "rockers" was taken from the name he had given his sound system (DJ set up) and latter his record label. It was a sound that seemed more in keeping with the Rastafari ethos of living as natural a life as possible as the rhythm takes on the characteristics of a pulse - a measure of the world's natural movement.
One of the great things about this collection of music is that it allows you the opportunity to trace Augustus Pablo's evolution as a composer and producer as we follow his career from his early work in the seventies with people like Leroy Sibbles of The Heptones on disc one updating an earlier rocksteady hit, "Love Won't Come Easy" over a rocker rhythm track. The first disc also includes "King Tubby Meets Rockers Uptown," the track that really popularized the music in England, some early dub collaborations between King Tubby and Pablo, and songs by Pablo produced singers Hugh Mundell and Jr. Delgado. You can hear the formation of the elements that will characterize Pablo's work over the course of his career; deep rhythms and soaring melodies that have an element of sadness and an air of the mystical coursing through them.
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