Bunny Wailer's Dream, 1947-2021

Reggae icon and mystic completes his journey.

Bunny Wailer, singer of songs like Dreamland and Soul Rebel, has died. Dreamland was his composition. Soul Rebel was Bob Marley’s, but Bunny’s version became iconic in concerts after Marley’s death. A global version was recorded by the music collaborative Playing for Change:

Reminiscing about their early days, Bunny had this to say about the concept of a Soul Rebel:

“… you have to be one that stands up for what is right truth (and) justice, and under that circumstances you're allowed to be labeled as a rebel.”

As for the other song: Everybody has a dreamland, a home from which they’ve been exiled, a place where they long to return. Bunny was a Rasta. His dreamland was Africa. But it was an Africa of the spirit, a place where the stars always shine and people always walk in beauty.

We are all from Africa, some more so than others. But most of us yearn for a dreamland, whether we know it or not.

The Abrahamic religions say we’ve been exiled from the Garden, and to the Garden we will return. Or, sometimes they say it’s a city, the New Jerusalem, filled with crystal spires and cathedrals of light. The Pure Land Buddhists saw a city, too:

“As it has been said: There will be a glorious city called Ketumatii inhabited by very rich people where there will be beautiful houses, pandals (a large open-sided temporary pavilion often used for large meetings) and gates which will shine like a heavenly city.”

The prophecies said that

“not a single person will live in a hut made of wood and leaves. Everyone will live in palaces made of the seven types of gems … no one will engage in cultivation, in trade or in any other profession; and no one will suffer from hunger. In suitable places of the earth, a self-generating rice paddy will appear which will bear pearl-like grains with a fragrance but no chaff.  …. Thus the city of Ketumati will be like a heaven.”

City, garden, the banks of a river: it’s all home. The home of the spirit, the home of the soul. We are all in exile, refugees from our own essential nature. Mystic, believer, atheist, it doesn’t matter. We are all on a journey back home.

The singer, who was born Neville Livingstone, was 73 years old.

Bunny Wailer, welcome home.

Dreamland:

The absurdly catchy first single by the “Wailing Wailers,” a ska record released in 1963: