Born on November 22, 1944, in Alexandria, a town in north-central Jamaica, Maxwell Livingston Smith lived and died as a reggae music maestro who used his outstanding talent and voice to identify with the masses of Jamaica. In the process, he came into conflict with the authorities, leading to a chequered musical career. But till death, he sustained his image as a reggae star with everlasting impact.

Moved to Britain when he was eight, after which he and his father, Irvin Smith, a chef, moved back to Kingston. He adopted the stage name Max Romeo, drawing on his reputation as a charmer (and his insistence that the name Max Smith lacked a certain appeal).

Growing up was not rosy for the artiste. He ran away from home at 14 and spent several years living on the streets. He found work as a runner for a Kingston record label, delivering singles to local radio stations. One day, the label’s owner heard him singing and offered to record a song he had written, I’ll Buy You a Rainbow. It became a hit in Kingston in 1965, and it put his career in motion.

His earliest hits dripped with ‘sexual innuendo’, but then switched to a soulful, politically engaged message that provided a soundtrack to the class struggles of 1970s Jamaica and made him a mainstay on the international tour circuit. Romeo died on April 11 outside Kingston, the capital of Jamaica. He was 80.

Romeo had first emerged in the late 60s with music of a more frivolous nature – notably the single, Wet Dream (1969), which reached No. 10 in the UK despite being banned from radio airplay for its sexual content.

He was among the last of a generation of Jamaican musicians who came to prominence in the 1970s, among them Bob Marley, Peter Tosh and Burning Spear. Their sound, known as roots reggae, centred on the lives of ordinary people in Jamaica, blended with a heavy dollop of Black liberation and Rastafarianism. Like other roots reggae artists, he remained committed to his Rastafarian beliefs; they were, he said, his “core motivation for making music.”

As the mode of Jamaican music began to change from Rock Steady to the slower, more charged form of roots reggae, Romeo became one of its foremost exponents, with many of his songs addressing the struggles between Rastafarianism and the Jamaican establishment.

Until then, reggae had been seen, at least beyond Jamaica, as a musical novelty focused on fleeting love and sex. But the 1970s musicians’ political message and laid-back sound, combined with their open marijuana use, gave reggae a new and lasting cultural resonance.

As Jamaican politics changed through the decade, rifts grew between the Manley government and many of the leading roots musicians, including Mr. Romeo. After recording a string of songs critical of the People’s National Party, he feared retribution and moved to New York City.

Max Romeo reached his peak as a roots reggae singer in the mid-1970s with two albums, Revelation Time and War Ina Babylon that focused on Rastafarianism and its juxtaposition with the fraught politics of post-independence Jamaica.

In 1989, he returned from New York to live in Jamaica, after making a new album, Transition that made few waves. He eventually found some material comfort through rereleases of old tunes on compilations.

However, despite his lasting popularity in Jamaica and Europe, Romeo did not find similar success in the United States, even during his decade in New York. He continued to turn out albums during the 1980s, but he also worked in a record store to make money. Finally, in 1989, a friend persuaded him to return to Jamaica, after the political storms passed. By then recognised as a paragon of reggae, Mr. Romeo recorded 17 more studio albums over the next 30 years and maintained a heavy tour schedule; on his last tour, in 2023, he performed in 56 cities.

Although the popularity of his subsequent work failed to extend much beyond his mid-70s zenith, he continued to tour and record almost up to his death, notching up more than 25 albums and 75 singles.