StrangeJah in Laguna : Reggae Musicians Will Perform at a Benefit to Provide Toys for Children at Orangewood

It’s not too surprising that a reggae singer would have a dream-vision of a visitation from the late Bob Marley.

Marley, after all, is reggae’s most venerated figure, the musician who did the most to bring what had been a local Jamaican pop form to worldwide recognition.

But when Marley appeared to StrangeJah Cole a few months ago while Cole was sleeping at his home in Laguna Hills, it wasn’t so much a revelation from a legend as a visit from an old acquaintance.

In the early 1960s, before the term reggae had even been coined or the distinctive beat it describes created, Cole and Marley came together in Kingston’s Trenchtown slum as aspiring teen-age street singers. There, Cole said, they would hook up in neighborhood vocal jam sessions, sharing the hope that they would win a chance to record for one of Jamaica’s major pop producers.

Cole will headline tonight at Club Postnuclear in a benefit concert to provide gifts for residents of the county-run Orangewood home for abused and neglected children. In a recent interview at the comfortable home he shares with his singing partner, Queen Rejoice, he recalled his dream of Marley, and talked about their days together years ago in the Kingston slums.

Cole, who is in his early 40s, didn’t so much talk his way through the interview as dance through it. He said he has too much energy to sit down and speak, so he talked standing up. Cole shuffled and swayed on his dining room’s parquet floor, swinging his stick-thin limbs to underline what he said in a smoky voice with a heavy Jamaican accent.

In the early days in Kingston, Cole said, groups of young singers, including himself and Marley, would congregate in the communal kitchen of a government housing project. There they would sing, using hand-claps for percussion and mouthed sounds for backup instrumentation.

“It was just like a family setting,” he said. “It was a unity.”

In those days, he was called Stranger Cole. “When I was born, they looked at me as a baby and said I didn’t resemble anyone in the family,” said the singer, whose given first name is Wilburn. “So they said I was a stranger, and it stuck. When I got older, they said I’m the spitting image of my father.”

It was as Stranger Cole that he got his first break when an older brother, a disc jockey for local dances, persuaded record producer Duke Reid to give him an audition.

Cole said his first success was as a songwriter, when Reid had another singer, Eric (Monty) Morris sing “In and Out the Window,” the first song Cole had ever written. It became a hit in Jamaica, earning Cole the chance to cut a record of his own. Cole says he was 15 or 16 when “Ruff and Tuff,” his debut single, became a No. 1 hit in Jamaica.

The style of that song was ska--a lighter, quicker-paced precursor of reggae. In 1971, Cole appeared outside Jamaica for the first time with a tour of Europe. In 1973 he settled in Toronto, where he opened a record shop and continued to perform.

A few years later, Bob Marley and the Wailers gave reggae its biggest boost toward widespread popularity in the United States. Acts such as Jimmy Cliff and Toots & the Maytals followed.

Predictably, much of that old communal feeling from the days of singing in the public kitchen was lost along the way as old friends turned into music business competitors.

“People started to get the star trip,” Cole said. “A lot of the artist unity was broken down, but the music grows. Reggae is at its peak in the world today. Everybody knows it.”

Few reggae fans know much about Cole, but that is something he says he is trying to change. He has been living for the past 2 years in Southern California. With Queen Rejoice (Joyce Wilson), he recently released a single, “The Protection,” that seeks to foster awareness of AIDS. The couple’s goal is to pursue a recording deal while continuing to make socially conscious music.

Cole says his dream about Marley helped reinforce that goal. “I dreamed that I met him in the cemetery, Alms House Burying Ground (in Kingston). We were singing, like we would do (in their early days). He said, ‘This is the time to go out and sing the songs that beat down Babylon,’ which means sing the songs that say the right thing.”

Cole said that Marley also advised him to begin to grow his previously close-cropped hair in dreadlocks for the first time. The dream also prompted Cole to change his name, switching from Stranger to StrangeJah by appending the Rastafarian term for God.

“We were brought up to pay attention to our dreams,” said Rejoice, a gentle-voiced woman who first came to the United States from Jamaica 20 years ago. “We were told, and still believe it, that people can speak to you in your dreams. You can be warned in your dreams.”

She didn’t say whether she dreamed about teaming up with Stranger Cole as a singing and romantic partner. They had been friends as teen-agers in Jamaica, where Rejoice would sneak away from home and disapproving parents to sing backup vocals on recording sessions. They reunited at a show Cole played in Los Angeles 2 years ago. Cole said he usually plays one or two shows a month now, backed by area reggae bands Waddi Gad or Jah Bandis, both of which will play at the benefit tonight. His recent Orange County shows have included benefits for AIDS projects and Jamaican hurricane relief.

Cole said he would like eventually to be remembered in two ways: as a pioneer of Jamaican pop, and as a musician who tried to use his talent to help others.

“When this is over, I want the world to say StrangeJah Cole was one of the artists who showed (Jamaican musicians) we could do something to be recognized,” he said.

StrangeJah Cole, Waddi Gad and Jah Bandis play tonight at Club Postnuclear, 775 Laguna Canyon Road, Laguna Beach, in a benefit for abused children at Orangewood. The show starts at 8:30, with admission $8.50. Concert-goers are also invited to bring unwrapped gifts for distribution at Orangewood. Information: (714) 494-1432.