Aashid Himons is beaming. A commanding presence with a large and seamless voice, he's like a proud papa whenever he talks about Blu-Reggae. Simply put, Blu-Reggae is the fusion of blues and reggae which Aashid pioneered during the late '70s - a music ironically spawned in Pittsburgh, then nurtured in Nashville with his group Afrikan Dreamland, who were surprisingly the first American act to have a reggae video aired on MTV. Now, the evolution of Blu-Reggae is documented thoroughly on The Leaders, the new double-CD by Afrikan Dreamland, due out in early fall on Soptek Records. The recordings have been six years in the making, and lifetimes in their fruition. "I first started thinking about the concept in 1978 or '79. I was already playing the blues ... " Aashid says. "I had grown up around the blues - you know, I had an uncle that would sing 'em at home. Since I was around the blues, I played 'em. But, things changed for me when I saw Bob Marley for the first time." Aashid was on the West Coast and had been playing bottleneck blues on the street in Seattle, Wash. and Portland, Ore. He had just moved back to the States after living in Central America for six years, honing his craft. Reggae, however, had begun to turn his head. He was walking up the street after a slow day in Seattle when he stumbled onto a crowd of people lined up all ~round the block to see a show at the old Paramount Theatre. The crowd was waiting there to see a performance by Bob Marley & The Wailers. The bluesman sat down to play his way into the show. A person in line came forward with an extra ticket, and Aashid soon experienced his reggae baptism. "They came out and played, and I have never heard before or since, the spiritual vibe that was in that theatre," Aashid recalls. "I had been trying to put a message with blues, but blues people didn't really want to hear that ... now before me was a new way to communicate, to fuse the blues with reggae. I recognized reggae as the rhythms in part of R&B ... it comes down to what you accentuate." He moved to the East Coast, and in Pittsburgh he began to lock in on the music, and the spirit behind it, as well as the significance of becoming dread. "The music began to really come out of me there," he says. "I had it in me all along, I just didn't know how to get it out. Then I got some free studio time, unexpectedly, and I went in and began to experiment with the fusion of the two. That's where Afrikan Dreamland was born."

From the innocence sensed on the opening tracks of The Leaders - the bluesy and rollicking live version of "Jah Boogie" and lhe trippy pop on "Grassy Fields" - to the more socially pointed commentary found on the title track, and on songs such as "Womanhood," "Apartheid," "Black Folks," "The Next Man's Army," and the riveting "USA," Aashid and Afrikan Dreamland move with effortless grace about the undulating landscape of love and the hate that shadows it. The thread throughout is Aashid's powerful voice, and the unstoppable consciousness that pervades the tracks whether it is the sublime and ethereal grooves heard on "Abu Aha," the praises of "I Touch The Stars," the simplicity of "Love Sounds," the unshakable testimony on "I & I Survive," or the freaky gospel bottleneck found on "Will The Circle Be Unbroken." The album has been a long time coming. "These are all recordings I've been working on ever since I came up with the concept of doing this album, which was in early 1989," he says. "I had dissolved the original Afrikan Dreamland in 1987. Then I got sick right after I dissolved it, and was in the hospital with pneumonia. About a year later, I decided I was gonna do this album." The music and the message behind the 25 songs - 24 previously unreleased tracks - are equally potent: spiritual healing blended into a heaving testament of Blu- reggae rhythms, with a smattering of gospel and funk. "The Leaders is about the plight of our species - which is the plight of our leaders," Aashid says. "It has been this way since time immemorial. This album is dedicated to all of them. They are the people who have gotten us to the brink of our existence. Whether you think it is negative or positive, depends on which side you're on. For every great leader that has been, there have been people who thought they were the worst person in the world - and there are those who have thought they were the best." One glance at the CD cover and you get the overwhelming vibe. A list of names ranging from Alexander the Great to Rosa Parks, from Plato to Bobby Seale, Marie Antoinette to Jackie Robinson. The names are but a vehicle, their actions a force for right or wrong. Longtime Afrikan Dreamland fans will note original partner, Darrell Rose, on four tracks, and the third member, Mustafa Abdul Aleem, on "Apartheid." Some cuts are live, recorded at shows in both Nashville and Athens, Ga. The production by Aashid, Giles Reaves, and Tim Coats, is excellent, facilitating the vibe without glossing it over. "The leaders have brought us here -on the edge of this abyss - and we're about to become totally extinct as a species," he explains. "I want it to be educational. Facism and hate have been going on for a long time. It seems as though there have always been people who are fascists, in every society they are born and,they grow up thinking that it is alright for someone to have total power over somebody else. Might makes right. There are others who feel that it is innately wrong. "I want this album to educate people to the vibe of oneness. Our biggest problem on the planet today is fascists. The world would be a lot better off without them - and we are going to have to evolve that way or our species will not survive ... All of the subjects dealt with on this album are relevant to that survival."