Franklyn “Bubbler” Waul has spent decades shaping reggae from the keyboard, often away from the spotlight. In a rare conversation, the Jamaican musician reflects on his early sessions, the mentors who opened doors, and the work still keeping his sound alive.
Franklyn “Bubbler” Waul belongs to the class of Jamaican musicians whose fingerprints are everywhere, even when their faces are not. A keyboard player, arranger and longtime session hand, he came through Kingston’s studio culture in the 1970s and helped give shape to recordings that remain central to reggae’s history. His credits include work connected to Joe Gibbs, Lloyd Parks’ We The People Band and Sly & Robbie’s Taxi Gang. Waul has generally preferred the musician’s position behind the curtain, letting the bass, drums and keys carry the conversation.
Waul’s route into the studio began while he was still young, after encouragement from his friend Winston McAnuff. His first commercial recording experience came at Aquarius, the studio associated with Herman Chin Loy, but Joe Gibbs’ operation became the more important training ground. There, Errol Thompson helped provide the setting in which Waul developed his instincts and became a dependable player. The lessons were practical: listen closely, understand the arrangement and find the part that strengthens the song without crowding it.
That discipline can be heard across the records tied to his career. Waul played on Dennis Brown’s “Money In My Pocket” and Culture’s “Two Sevens Clash,” two recordings that sit firmly in reggae’s canon. His role was not simply to place chords beneath a vocal. Waul’s gift was in melody, texture and arrangement, knowing when a keyboard line should answer the singer and when restraint would serve the rhythm better. In the golden era of Jamaican sessions, that combination made him a musician producers could call on repeatedly.
His memories also carry the texture of Kingston life before the music business became fully formalised. Waul has recalled school days spent finding ways to play secular music on a church piano, along with the comic manoeuvres used to avoid the attention of a strict principal. Those stories reveal a restless young musician already treating every available instrument as a doorway. They also explain something about his later reputation: the craft came first, and the performance of celebrity never seemed to interest him much.
Waul’s work did not stop with the classic studio years. He has continued appearing with veteran musicians, including Lloyd Parks and Sly Dunbar, and was seen alongside them at Rototom Sunsplash in 2022. His more recent activity has included the instrumental project “Roots Architects” from Fruits Records and a contribution to Aleighcia Scott’s “Windrush Baby.” He has also continued developing Waul Of Sound, a project rooted in instrumental reggae and concerned with carrying the tradition forward without treating it as a museum piece.
The interview itself came after years in which Waul kept his distance from formal attention. He agreed to speak in Kingston before a live show, in the noisy surroundings of a car park, and discussed mentorship, his earliest sessions, football and his loyalty to Manchester United. He also spoke about the less glamorous side of a long music career, including the difficulty of managing publishing rights. That balance defines Waul’s story: a musician with rare historical reach, still focused on the work and still building sound beyond the spotlight.
