At the time of writing these memories there is virtually no mention of his passing in the press or on the internet, save for the Facebook page of his group The Suns Of Arqa. This might seem unusual for a musician who was central to the emergence of a fuzzy genre that might be called ethnobeat, often filed under world music, and produced around 40 albums since The Suns Of Arqa’s 1980 debut, Revenge Of The Mozabites. But Michael Ward, aka Mikey Wadada, was always something of a shape shifter, mythologist and hustler supreme, someone who was difficult to pin down personally and musically, but who came up with the goods time after time.

I first met Michael shortly after the release of Revenge Of The Mozabites. Adrian Sherwood had given him a bunch of rhythms and ended up mixing most of the tracks on the album. Michael credited him as ‘Adran Rydims’! Style Scott from The Roots Radics was on drums. Michael approached me to run a session at the old BBC Radio Blackburn studios, and while I was really looking forward to recording The Suns Of Arqa’s then revolutionary sounds, what we actually got was Michael’s alter ego, Lone Star & The Sprout Head Uprising, his version of a new wave cabaret band covering tunes from the likes of George Landry of The Wild Tchoupitoulas, John Prine, Lee Perry, Homer Banks and Hoyt Axton.

Michael liked to weave the tale that the whole concept for Suns Of Arqa came about on a visit to Jamaican in 1979 when he was reasoning with Prince Far I while walking in the mountains, emerging with a musical vision combining nyahbinghi drumming with the “supernatural potential of the classical raga structures of India”. The likelihood is he met Far I through the good offices of Mr Sherwood who was partnering the deejay on business between Kingston and London. But as ever, he came up with the goods, presenting Far I at a gig backed by The Suns Of Arqa at Manchester’s Band On The Wall in December 1982, which was captured on tape and initially released in 1988 on a ROIR cassette as The Musical Revue for which I contributed sleevenotes (I’d previously included the track “Brujo Magic” on the compilation album Bugs On The Wire in 1987). On his return to Jamaica Far I was murdered by an unidentified gunman.

Although Wadada is often seen as a peripatetic musician with his frequent trips to India to hone his skills and collaborate with musicians who possessed the knowledge he wished to acquire, for most of the first part of his career he lived at home with his Mum in Ashton-under-Lyne near Manchester from where he would venture forth for musical expeditions. Those who later followed his example, including Transglobal Underground, Jah Wobble’s Invaders Of The Heart, Loop Guru and Afro-Celt Sound System, had more commercial success but left the originator unacknowledged; even the late lamented Andrew Weatherall liberally sampled The Suns Of Arqa for his first Sabres Of Paradise single with no credit given.

Down the road from Michael in Swinton lived Bryn Jones aka Muslimgauze. Bryn had been sending me his music on a regular basis as On The Wire was the only radio show to play his work. He had a long-time admiration for Revenge Of The Mozabites, so the pair colluded on a remix album. After just a week, Bryn sent back 19 tracks including wild treatments of Youth's original mix of “Jaggernaut Whirling Dub” and Sherwood's mix of “Acid Tabla”. Although Bryn’s unspoken but clear support for the Palestinian cause dominated his work, Michael had “no political agenda other than hope for unity, wisdom and happiness for all sentient beings”. They met only once but the remix album is a perfect place to start for both artists.

Every time Michael had an album to promote a copy would arrive for radio play and inevitably he would follow up with a phone call when I would learn where he had been, where he was and what he was doing. There was always an angle and a new twist to enthuse about, like his collaboration with Professor Stanley Unwin, inventor of his own comic language Unwinese, on the 2003 album Tributey, or his journey to Budapest to meet his Hungarian counterpart László Hortobágyi from The Gayan Uttejak Orchestra which resulted in a collaborative album on which Unwin appeared and also John Cooper Clarke. A further session at BBC Radio Lancashire ensued and the resultant tracks are available on the Suns’ Bandcamp site.

Suns Of Arqa gigs across a number of festivals are now of legendary status, whether they were performing an extended drone set resulting in horizontal enjoyment, or the jump-up style of world-dub-dance. But over the last couple of decades gigs for the band became more and more difficult to source. Michael and his long time partner Angela aka Angel Eye were located in the North of Scotland, near Elgin, for many years where they would base their recording sessions. Although more than 200 musicians were anointed into The Suns Of Arqa fellowship over the years, no doubt it was becoming problematic to keep this kind of musical balancing act together. Like many other friends in the ‘industry’, Michael often bemoaned the difficulties besetting him in keeping body and soul together, which is why he drew together his vast catalogue in digital form to sell via his own website and Bandcamp.

A few years ago Michael and Angel attempted a couple of years living in St Annes in Lancashire, nearer to ‘civilization’ and just down the road from me. I would see him regularly and can honestly say his enthusiasm for music, rather than the business of music, had not diminished. In his time in the town he would frequent New Horizons, a ‘friendly meeting place for free thinking people’ which, as you might expect, was a cloak for discussions on everything from conspiracy theories to ancient mysteries. Michael performed a few chilled gigs there, and my son Max played bass for him a few times; film can be found on YouTube.

Michael’s last official album, The Wolf Of Badenoch, was released last year, and was based on the life of the Earl of Buchan, great-grandson of Robert the Bruce, who in the 14th century fought a long battle against the power and corruption of the Church. It features the lone pipes of John Snelson who played at the funeral of Michael’s mother in the early 1990s. He was a street musician in Salford who recorded a cassette for sale that Wadada found by accident one day while searching through his archives…