Reggae Singer With a Legacy, a Following and a Mission

LAST month, inside a sprawling new tourist resort on the Montego Bay coast, Tarrus Riley did the near impossible: He and his seven-piece band, anchored by the Jamaican saxophone virtuoso Dean Fraser, transformed an antiseptic, fluorescent-lighted, air-conditioned hotel ballroom into a sweaty reggae dance party. Mr. Riley, a 30-year-old Rastafarian singer-songwriter, was celebrating the imminent release of his third album, “Contagious” (VP Records), a diverse collection of songs that reveal the complexity and richness of a genre often dismissed as monotonous.

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