Higher Meditation & Living Fire Tour

WHILE THERE HAVE been hundreds of Jamaican-music labels over the past 50 years, only a handful have had an international impact. England's Greensleeves Records is one such company, and for three decades it has licensed or recorded some of the best roots reggae and dancehall songs ever waxed (or digitized).

To celebrate its 30th anniversary, Greensleeves put together the "Higher Meditation & Living Fire Tour," and its penultimate performance pulls into Crossroads on Saturday for a night of righteous reggae featuring four of the label's socially conscious flamethrowers: Anthony B., Chuck Fenda, Fantan Mojah and Natural Black.

While born in Guyana, Natural Black has lived in Kingston, Jamaica, since 1995. Like his early influence Buju Banton, Black can switch between sweet swinging and rough-voiced deejaying at the flip of a selector's turntable switch.

Fantan Mojah is an imposing and powerful rootsman who released one of the best reggae tunes in the past 10 years with "Hungry," an insanely catchy but urgent cry for Jamaica's poorest people.

Neither is Chuck Fenda, aka "The Poor People Defenda" (shown above), afraid to attack the government and criminal elements that have caused Jamaica's economic and social ills. His radio-banned tune "Gash Dem and Light Dem" has more than a bit of Old Testament justice in it, but it became a huge hit in the dancehall last year.

And headliner Anthony B. has been courting controversy ever since his incendiary 1996 single "Fire Pon Rome" sent government officials reeling (it, too, was banned from radio), and his acoustic protest song "Mr. Heartless" was used in the eye-opening, World Bank-damning documentary "Life and Debt."

» Crossroads, 4103 Baltimore Ave., Bladensburg; Sat., 10 p.m. doors, $35; 301-927-1056.

Image courtesy of Greensleeves