"I hear there's a storm on the horizon," says Max Romeo, his voice heavy with portent. "I hope you are spared." It takes a couple of seconds to realise that he means the gale-force winds preparing to batter Britain's southern coastline. Such is the 63-year-old's righteous gravity that he can make a weather warning sound like the end of days.

Since he traded crotch-level hits such as Wet Dream for rastafarianism in the early 70s, Romeo has been reggae's most tireless chronicler of hard times. His songs are invariably about "walking on a tightrope/living on the thin line", and his 1976 masterpiece War Ina Babylon, produced by Lee Perry at his creative zenith, remains one of the most compelling protest albums ever made: a tough yet tuneful SOS from a country in crisis.

One can only imagine the impact that songs such as One Step Forward must have had in a Jamaica racked by civil unrest. Even in front of people who, judging from the paleness of their skin and the shortness of their hair, are at best fleetingly acquainted with the teachings of Haile Selassie, they retain their enduring force. When, after all, do people not feel that they are living in "perilous times"?

However dire his message, Romeo has not lasted this long without being an accomplished showman. Prowling the stage, occasionally shaking his waist-length dreadlocks, he is supported by a well-drilled seven-piece band. He invites the crowd to sing the familiar refrain of Chase the Devil, famously sampled on the Prodigy's Out of Space, and breaks off from War Ina Babylon into a few bars of Give Peace a Chance, which is somewhat corny but effective. He exits with a romping ska medley, suggesting, just for a moment, that maybe society is not on the brink of a fiery demise after all.