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Max Romeo, ‘War Ina Babylon’ Reggae Singer Dies at 80
Reggae singer Max Romeo, best known for songs such as 'War Ina Babylon' and 'Chase the Devil,' has died in Jamaica at age 80.
Max Romeo, the beloved reggae singer best known for recording such widely sampled songs as “War Ina Babylon” and “Chase the Devil” died in Saint Andrew Parish, Jamaica on Friday (April 11) at age 80. Born in St. D’Acre in St. Anne, Jamaica on Nov. 22, 1944, Romeo left home as a teenager to seek out a music career in Kingston in the late 1960s, where he met such future reggae superstars as Bob Marley and Peter Tosh and got his first small taste of success as part of the group The Emotions. Infused with Perry’s signature reverb-drenched dub style, the album opened with the hypnotic “One Step Forward” — a broadside against Prime Minister Michael Manley’s declaration of a state of emergency in 1976 — and included the pleading title track, which mirrored the political and social turmoil that gripped the island nation in the mid-1970s.
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