Bunny Wailer Bio
Bunny Wailer, the lesser known of the original Wailers, is considered by true reggae enthusiasts as one of the legends of the genre. The three time winner of the Grammy Award for reggae music has a long career dedicated mostly to sociopolitical and religious themes. Bunny Wailer has explored reggae rhythms from it's origins stemming from ska and rocksteady to dancehall but has remained mostly within the original roots sound.
Bunny Wailer, born Neville O'Riley Livingston on april 10, 1947, was raised as a brother to Robert Nesta Marley, better known as
Bob Marley, on the town of Nine Miles in Jamaica. In 1952 Bunny's father, along with Marley's mother, moved to the tenement yards of Trenchtown in Kingston where both kids met a Winston Hubert McIntosh, who would be later known as Peter Tosh. At that time a new rhythm was emerging with a slower tempo of the ska sound known as reggae music. The three formed a reggae band that would go thru a few name changes until settling on the Wailers. Bunny Wailer would take a bigger role as composer and percucionist leaving a bigger load of the vocals to Marley and Tosh.
By 1973 the Wailers were the biggest reggae band on Jamaica touring extensively throughout the island. The time came to take their show to an international level with a tour that would take them for a few months to England and later to the United States. Bunny Wailer would go on the UK part of the tour but would leave the band and return to Jamaica without making the US leg. By the end of the tour, on the band's return to Jamaica, Peter Tosh would also quit the band.
By the time the Wailers broke up, the three had established their own recording labels, Bunny Wailer's named Solomonic. After the split he released some singles until 1975 when came out his first solo album named Blackheart Man. Peter Tosh and the Wailers' Barrett brothers collaborated on the recording as did Bob Marley on the remake of an old Wailers song. Wailer focused on his spiritual and rastafarian faith and did not go on stage from 1975 until 1982. Bob Marley and Peter Tosh toured extensively throughout the world gaining a fame and popularity that Bunny would never achieve. He had to rely on the success of the albums he kept releasing at the time with the Roots Radics as backup.
During the eighties Bunny Wailer experimented with new rhythms like dancehall and even got influensed by disco. Even though he finally dominated these rhythms he eventually returned to a rootsier sound backed then by the reunited Skatelites toward the end of the decade. In 1986 Wailer finally broke his own barrier leaving the island on a tour that would see his USA debut in Long Beach, California. Attendees to his shows would claim his presentations as energetic, full of good vibes and an event not to be missed. The next decade on, his releases and tours would be few and far between. Bunny Wailer would go on to win the Grammy Award for reggae album three times during the nineties with releases dedicated to his ex-partner Bob Marley.
Bunny Wailer, named by Newsweek magazine as one of the three most important figures of world music, is coming to Puerto Rico again for the third time. The concert will be held at The Anfiteatro Tito Puente, El Anfi, in San Juan, Puerto Rico on june 20, 2009. This is an event that no reggae fan should miss. We can no longer see Bob Marley or Peter Tosh but we can witness the legend that Bunny Wailer is. We have been fortunate in Puerto Rico to have had the greatest reggae artists on our stages. Having the chance to see Bunny Wailer live again is a blessing. Having the chance to see Bunny Wailer live again is witnessing history.