Ras Michael & The Sons Of Negus - None A Jah Jah Children (Greensleeves)

Tommy still remembers how he first noticed the band during a nyahbinghi-session: "It was at a particularly session one night listening to all this music playing and it really had me in a different world. It was somewhere in St. Thomas, pretty close to Kingston... not out in the country... and there was a bonfire and all going on. I was so touched by the way those guys delivered and I had to do something about it. …so I went to his house off Hagley Park Road where I saw him playing on clay pots on a table filled to different levels with water with sticks.".

Cowan admits it wasn't easy convincing Ras Michael to supplement his drumming sound with electric instrumentation: "I decided to go to the studio and Ras Michael was insistent that the music should be particularly in the original style but I had some other thoughts about how the music should sound. He didn't want a bass guitar and drum set, so to be able to work with him I had to go with Ras Michael. The first album ('Nyahbinghi', Trojan Records/Starapple, 1974) is strictly particularly... pure drumming... basic stuff... but you'll hear the other instruments on 'Rastafari' and 'Kibir-Am-Lak'... I brought musicians like Robbie Shakespeare into the whole thing. So when we did 'Rastafari' we had a more main street result from that because 'None A Jah Jah Children', 'Birds in The Tree Top'... those songs actually went into the regular charts.".

In addition to Robbie Shakespeare, 'Rastafari' also featured Peter Tosh (guitar, clavinet), Geoffrey Chung (keys), Carlton 'Santa' Davis (drums) and Earl 'Chinna' Smith (guitar). Three years on, 'Kibir-Am-Lak' followed, with Cowan once again applying and the same recipe enabling Ras Michael & The Sons Of Negus to successfully bridge the gap between traditional nyahbinghi and popular music without having to have to sell their soul: "I thought that somehow it would be an historic thing. It's like library music... part of our history... part of a movement. It was more authentic... real roots and not so commercial. In 1975 'Rastafari' was celebrated in its true sense!".

Ras Michael currently resides in California where he's an ambassador and diplomat for the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church and president of the Rastafarian International/Marcus Garvey Culture Center in Los Angeles and Fly Away Culture Centre in Kingston. Of course Greensleeves already reissued, but for this edition they were bundled together in one package for the first time, featuring extensive liner notes by Harry Wise, and with the addition of bonus track 'Georges Lane' and dubs 'Jah Glory', 'Chant Out The Wicked', 'A New Dub' and 'No Hoppers Version' as the absolute icing on the cake!