20th Annual Pollak Prizes for Excellence in the Arts
Awareness Art Ensemble
Reggae Band
Awareness Art Ensemble founder and lead singer Olamina Ridley (Photo by Chris Smith)
AAE didn’t just introduce reggae to Richmond, it made us love it. Formed in 1979, the band helped to spur a vibrant Rastafarian scene in the city, popularizing a colorful (and aromatic) club at Harrison and Broad streets, The New Horizon’s Cafe, which was like Jamaica in miniature. “There wasn’t any bonafide reggae band in Virginia, period, before AAE,” says writer Darrl Davenport, who has chronicled the genre’s local history.
“Most people thought we were from the islands somewhere,” says a laughing Carl Olamina Ridley, aka Ola, the lead singer and founder of the Jamaican-inspired roots ensemble. But, no, the members were Virginia natives who fully embraced the Rasta lifestyle.
It started with spoken-word performances by Ola at informal Petersburg house concerts. His best friend, keyboardist Ojulaba Hunter, or O.J., would provide accompaniment. Charles “Chuck X” Gilliam soon started adding bass guitar lines, and guitarist Ras Mel Glover stepped up to add metallic chunk. Finally, there was Ernest “Drummie Zeb” Williams, the band’s youngest member, who would later go on to play for 16 years with the Wailers (yes those Wailers). “And that’s the primary core AAE lineup that everybody remembers,” Ola says.
“When I first saw the band, it was more of a drum and poetry group, like the Last Poets and Gil Scott-Heron,” Ras Mel says. “It was Ola and O.J. and Chuck X and a drummer named Tony Mat. He was a jazz player who liked reggae music.” Drummers who really knew the music were few and far between, so they called on “the young dude.”
AAE in 1988
“Ras Mel came over to me one day and said, ‘Hey, we’re going to start a reggae band,’ ” says Drummie Zeb, recalling the band’s origins from his home in Nashville, Tennessee. “He and Ola had been talking. And you know, my first gig with AAE was upstairs at Stuffy’s [sub shop].”
In its ’80s heyday, the unit popularized island sounds across the region and beyond, integrating itself into the city’s burgeoning new wave/punk scene, taking over rock clubs like Hard Times and the Flood Zone.
“Dogwood Dell was the best, we used to play it every year and pack that place,” Drummie Zeb says. AAE shared stages with reggae giants Peter Tosh, Third World, Jimmy Cliff, Yellow Man, Eek-a-Mouse and Steel Pulse, among others.
The original AAE lasted for 12 years, before it splintered into other groups, such as Razor Posse and Mind, Body and Spirit; Ola continued on, with original members mixing with new players. Chuck X died in 1999, and the last time the rest of the original group performed together was in 2010. Today’s AAE performs only a few times a year.
If the band’s original mover has one regret, it is that the band recorded infrequently — releasing just one album, “Coming Home,” and two singles. “I want to change that,” he says. “I’m in the studio now working on some of the live songs we never recorded.”
“When Bob Marley died, we felt the torch was being passed to us,” he says.
The fire still burns.
