Bob Bell Writes About Wes Dover - The Reggaeologist
My wife Britt spent the weekend cleaning out the desk in her office. The last year of her working life was spent, like so many others, working from home, and now finally, she is retired, freed from the everyday hassles of managing a business, and can indulge her love of photography and art. Just has to clear out all that now un-needed old work-related stuff, and make room for the fun stuff. And like everyone else who has worked from home, her desk has a bunch of non-work-related things in it.
One of those items was a small printed flyer for a memorial to an old friend of ours, Wes Dover, who died in May 2014. It is one of those things that one is reluctant to throw in the trash, but being unsure just what to do with it - we don’t have a file or folder for dead friends - the paper was placed in a drawer, where it remained until this weekend.
Britt showed it to me and together we marvelled at the fact that it had been seven years since Wes had unexpectedly died - at the age of 60 - and as we looked at the paper, memories of this kind and unassuming man came flooding back.
We had met him around 2011, as we were on our way to a show by our reggae musician friend Rusty Zinn, who had a once-a-month Friday night residency at a club on Broadway in downtown Oakland. Oakland, home of a thriving arts scene, would close several streets to vehicular traffic on the First Friday Arts Walk of each month - before Covid that is - with the worthy aim of promoting the arts. Garages that during the day had been repairing cars would become art galleries, cafes would sell coffee and jewelry, city block after city block would feature art for sale, dance troupes, performers, bands, tents and trailers selling all kinds of exotic foods. The roads and sidewalks were full of folks shoulder to shoulder, looking, eating, watching, talking, dancing, digging the evening, a pulsing mass of people hungry for spectacle, experience and fun.
So Britt and I were walking to Rusty’s gig, and in front of us was a tall muscular African American guy in a black t-shirt, with the legend ’Wes Dover - Thee Reggaeologist’ printed on the back. It was kind of a no-brainer to tap him on the shoulder and inform him of Rusty’s show that night.
‘Oh yeah man, I know about it, sure do, indeed, where else do you think I’m going?’ And he laughed a big shuddering laugh, his eyes twinkling, clapping his hands. ‘Man, I’m Wes, Wes Dover, Thee Reggaeologist, and I’m sure pleased to meet you. Sounds like you know and understand the joys of reggae too’, and his giant laugh echoed down the street as we entered the club together.
Rusty and the band were already on the stand when we walked in, and Wes swayed to the beat right away. Rusty was on a rock-steady kick, singing a hypnotic Alton Ellis tune to a sparse crowd and an empty dance floor. Wes just grooved on over the floor, moving to the rhythm, his big arms indicating the accents, his large frame turning and gyrating with a delicacy that belied his size, his face beaming with pleasure, his feet tapping in time, legs going back and forth, shoulders swaying, and now and then he’d just holler, at no-one in particular ‘Let it go, let it go!’ The stage was kitty-corner to the entrance, and every now and then Wes danced out the door to the sidewalk, out there amongst the First Friday throng, imploring customers to come in, to soak in the healing music, to let it go, let it go. He was one man promotional dynamo, dancing, enthusing, a joyous evangelist for the music he obviously lived and loved, breathing it in and out, exhorting one and all to be catharticized, to share in the exhilaration of the purifying rhythm.
He was in the moment all right, and he stayed in the moment for the duration of the entire set.
At the end of the evening, he reached into his bag, and gave Rusty and I a couple of CDs he had burnt, handing them over like they were sacramental wafers, his communion. Rusty and I spoke a few days later. ‘Did you listen to Wes’ CD?’ Rusty asked me. ’No, couldn’t get it to play’, I replied. ’Me neither,’ said Rusty.
We saw him each month, every month until the residency ended. At the end of each show, he’d reach into his bag and bring forth a couple more wafers. They would never play. A year or so later we ran into him at Bimbo’s 365 Club, a legendary San Francisco venue where he had landed a job working security. He had a similar gig at Ashkenaz, a community center in Berkeley, that happily put on regular reggae shows.
He was unvaryingly cheerful and smiling, forever gracious and caring, and always had a CD to hand out. We were never able to learn much about him, and he rarely showed up in the presence of other company. He was a mystery, a good-natured mystery.
And then in 2014, we learned he had died. Quite suddenly and unexpectedly.
We went to the Memorial Service at Ashkenaz on May 25th, 2014, and finally got to meet his family and friends. It was an emotional but joyful event. The smiling shadow and infectiously joyful influence of Wes Dover, Thee Reggaeologist was everywhere. One by one folks walked up to the microphone and talked about him, and the joy he had spread.
Quite predictably, when Britt had handed me the Memorial Service flyer, right out of the blue, Thee Reggaeologist was with us once more, and both of us had grinned the biggest grins. We talked about Wes for a bit, and then as she held the flyer, Britt said, ‘You know, Wes was such a sweet man, I’m just going to put him back in the drawer’.
