The Meditations - Deeper Roots

The Meditations - Deeper Roots: The Best of The Meditations (Heartbeat) HBCD 158 1994

Back in the day, of all of the harmony groups that were around at the time, The Meditations got the least attention from me. In part, it was due to ignorance, and it was also because much of their material was not readily available to me. One could find Wailing Souls, Mighty Diamonds, The Itals, or Israel Vibration on LP in the stores but one was hard pressed to find a Meditations release. I eventually picked up a few Meditation records on vinyl, in particular Guidance but did not play them often for some reason.

Flash forward to current time and as I am perusing releases I come across the above mentioned greatest hits package. Aside from being on Heartbeat, which guarantees a respectful and quality release, it contains a nice overview of The Meditations career up until then. Upon playing this CD for the first time (and after the sixth time!), one can only come to the conclusion that those that held The Meditations in high regard from the beginning had gotten it right from the start.

This CD contains 20 songs (including bonus tracks) that spans the entire career of The Meditations. There are 3 tracks from Wake Up (1979), 4 from Message from the Meditations (1976), 3 from Guidance (1980), a couple of 12", and some rare tracks from sessions at Black Ark with Lee Perry at the controls. The whole album is classic Jamaican reggae of the highest order.

Unlike the Mighty Diamonds, for example, who relied largely on the lead vocals of one singer, the Meditations had three singers that could all carry lead vocal duties (Ansel Cridland, Danny Clarke, and Winston Watson). In addition, each singer had a distinct method of interpreting a song. As a result, the variety of vocal styles works well along with the classic rhythms.

The CD comes with a nice booklet that provides an overview of the career and puts the music of group in context. Also, the back of the booklet provides a nice song recap that provides information on the musicians, engineers and time frame. All the key information that any reggae fanatic would want to know. While the whole album reeks of classic the best moments for me are the songs produced by Lee Perry at Black Ark (Running from Jamaica, No Peace, and Think So) as these carry some of that trademark Perry molasses mix. That is a good thing! This is classic era reggae roots music. If you are not going to hunt down the LPs, then this CD is a must have.

Track List

1. Wake Up
2. Turn Me Loose
3. Running From Jamaica
4. Having Fun
5. Miracles
6. Jungle Feelings
7. Woman Is Like A Shadow
8. Nice Time
9. Quiet Woman
10. No Peace
11. Babylon Trap Them
12. Something Looking Good
13. Groovy Situation (aka Being A Dread Is No Crime)
14. Think So (aka Much More Smarter)
15. Tricked
16. Fly Natty Dread
17. Do Mamma Do
18. Man Find It
19. What A Bam Bam (Bonus track of The Linkers with Ansel Cridland)
20. Bongo Man (Bonus track of The Linkers with Ansel Cridland)