Aston (Family Man) Barret (The Wailers)

Aston Barret, (click to enlarge)
With his brother Carlton (drums) (left), Barret (right) is credited as the backbone of the Wailers. Catch a Fire (1973) marked a breakthrough for Bob Marley (center) to international stardom and was his inaugural collaboration with Barret. While "classic" rock diffueses Instrumental functionality as over-driven guitars, ride cymbals and walking bass are overlayed in concurrent emphasis, this is not the case in reggae. Instead, unadulterated chords are reduced to the upstroke and tom tom-centric drums accentuate the rythm's Africaness or "roots "( a synonym for reggae). As man and women are utterly distinct until mysteriously merged through the unlikely neurotic advance and restraint of the mating dance, so too are we moved by instrumental minimalism yielding a whole that exceeds the sum of its parts. Reggae knows no guitar heroes or 20 piece drum sets, or slap-and-snap. It only happens when it all happens . "Family man" is so named because he's said to have sired 52 children.