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estern New Yorkers were favored with near-ideal weather conditions for an outdoor concert by one of the finest of the old-guard reggae artists still alive, Burning Spear.

The sky was blue and cloudless over an audience that might very well have been one of the biggest (and perhaps the liveliest) in this year's Lafayette Square series.

It was a remarkable confluence of meteorological conditions, infectious rhythms and an enthusiastic, pumped-up crowd.

Winston Rodney, knows around the world as Burning Spear, proves his greatness every time he and his band set foot on stage.

Those mighty Wailers, Bob Marley and Peter Tosh, may be gone, but their fellow traveler is still around, fueling reggae's incendiary grooves and beats with his righteous voice and a historical perspective and purity of art lacking in many of the current day toasters and boasters.

Words and music are one in Burning Spear's art.

In Thursday's show they audibly showcased Third World policitcal concerns in addition to preaching aspects of Rastafarian doctrine, providing a lyrical double axis around which songs like "Marcus Garvey" and "Calling Rastafari" revolved.

There was a sense of majesty and sureness of purpose to Spear's show.

The band, a tautly focused outfit with a killer horn section and a powerful, pulsing drum/bass combo, laid down a basic riff as the mighty man started by exhibiting a kind of static charisma for the first few songs.

A little further into the program, Spear expanded his personal space to include the set of congas and percussion toys to his right, bending the other rhythm players to his own vision before returning to center stage for more vocalizing.

The singer then retreated, seemingly, into his own world, caught up in the moment and circling like a dervish in slow motion, before returning, like a true professional, to a song's lyrics right when the rhythm required it.

The whole process was timelessly organic yet subtly powerful in its execution.

In many ways, One World Tribe, based in Erie, Pa., was a perfect choice to open up the show for Buring Spear. They shared a similar, if less well-formed, political dynamic but also showcased a musical backdrop that included reggae stylings alongside snippets of juju, calypso, soul horn bands from the 1970s and Parliment/Funkadelic.

In fact, their putative lead guitarist (there is a veritable host of multi-instrumentalists in the band) seems to draw heavily on the influence of George Clinton's string benders, Gary Shider and Eddie Hazel, especially in songs like "No Justice, No Peace" and "Money Don't Make It Right."

The band also had quite a stage show, augmenting the basic octet with three of four dedicated percussionists and a quintet/sextet of dancers that moved like a combination of holiness parishioners and an African chorus line.