Celebrating Bob Marley’s birthday.
Commentary by Black Kos Editor Denise Oliver-Velez
In these times of trouble and strife, with racism run rampant, and war, destruction, death and inequalities are global phenomena — for our souls and sanity we need to take time to celebrate — to unleash joy and the righteousness of brother and sisterhood.
Today, we come together to celebrate the life and soul of Bob Marley. who would have been 73 today. He left this earthly realm at the age of 36, however his legacy in song remains alive and well and continues to inspire and motivate new generations of young people around the world.
There are numerous biographies of Marley, a ton of information on his official site, and a feature documentary as well:
Last year another book was added to the growing collection.
“So Much Things to Say: The Oral History of Bob Marley,” by Roger Steffens with an introduction by British dub poet Linton Kwesi Johnson.
A revelatory, myth-shattering history of one of the most influential musicians of all time, told in the words of those who knew him best.
Roger Steffens is one of the world’s leading Bob Marley experts. He toured with the Wailers in the 1970s and was closely acquainted with Bunny Wailer, Peter Tosh and the rest of the band members. Over several decades he has interviewed more than seventy-five friends, business managers, relatives and confidants—many speaking publicly for the first time. Forty years in the making, So Much Things to Say weaves this rich testimony into a definitive telling of the life of the reggae king—the full, inside account of how a boy from the slums of Kingston, Jamaica, became a cultural icon and inspiration to millions around the world.
The intimacy of the voices and the frankness of their revelations will astonish even longtime Marley fans. Readers see the intense bonds of teenage friendship among Peter, Bunny and Bob, the vibrant early sessions with the original Wailers (as witnessed by members Junior Braithwaite, Beverley Kelso and Cherry Green) and the tumultuous relationships with Rita Marley and Cindy Breakspeare.
With unprecedented candor, these interviews tell dramatic, little-known stories, from the writing of some of Marley’s most beloved songs to the Wailers’ violent confrontation involving producer Lee “Scratch” Perry, Bob’s intensive musical training with star singer Johnny Nash and the harrowing assassination attempt at 56 Hope Road in Kingston, which led to Marley’s defiant performance two nights later with a bullet lodged in his arm.
Readers witness Marley’s rise to international fame in London, his triumphant visit to Zimbabwe to sing for freedom fighters inspired by his anthems and the devastating moment of his collapse while jogging in New York’s Central Park. Steffens masterfully conducts the story of Marley’s last months, as Marley poignantly sings “Another One Bites the Dust” during the sound check before his final concert in Pittsburgh, followed by his tragic death at the age of thirty-six.
So Much Things to Say explores major controversies, examining who actually ordered the shooting attack on Hope Road, scrutinizing claims of CIA involvement and investigating why Marley’s fatal cancer wasn’t diagnosed sooner. Featuring Steffens’s own candid photographs of Marley and his circle, this magisterial work preserves an invaluable, transformative slice of music history: the life of the legendary performer who brought reggae to the international stage
Touré reviewed the book for The New York Times:
Marley introduced reggae and Rastafarianism to much of the globe, making him a crucial ambassador for those subcultures, and he is the face of Jamaica, by far its most famous son. If he is a Cultural Senator, then that’s part of his delivering for his constituents— he spread an image of Jamaica around the world, and now everyone has a soft spot in his or her heart for that magical island. But at the same time Marley’s politics were revolutionary.
In “War”Marley declares war on racism, and you get the sense that he does not mean war in a purely symbolic way. In “Redemption Song” he challenges us to respond to the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Malcolm X — “How long shall they kill our prophets, while we stand aside and look?” In “Them Belly Full (but We Hungry)” he criticizes the class system in Jamaica. In “Zimbabwe” he calls for liberating Africa’s nations. In “Burnin’ and Lootin’” he refers to violent resistance. Marley was speaking for the downtrodden and urging oppressed people throughout the African diaspora to revolt by any means necessary.
Whether your Bob Marley is the spirit of “One Love” or of “Redemption Song” no one can deny his impact on the global body politic.
I was smiling last night as I looked over pictures of our POTUS’ visit to the Bob Marley Museum in Jamaica.
The Jamaica Gleaner reports on today’s events.
Happy birthday Bob Marley - Full day of activities planned in celebration
A full day of activities is planned for today at 56 Hope Road, in recognition of the reggae icon's 73rd birthday.
From 7 a.m.-10 a.m., there will be an invitation-only opening ceremony, with tributes including song of the Abeng, items by the Mona Preparatory School, Charlie Smith High and Haile Selassie High schools.
From 11 a.m.-3 p.m., the museum will host three symposiums. The topics will range from women excelling in male-dominated fields, to the impact of Rastafari culture on an international scale.
Throughout the day, the museum will provide a kiddie's village, complete with wall painting and a mobile zoo (with animals provided by the Hope Zoo).
From 3-10 p.m., the concert segment of the day will take place. Along with performances by this year's ambassadors Adazeh and Blvk H3ro, the concert will also feature Agent Sasco, Bugle, Fantan Mojah, Junior Reid, and others.
Skip and Stephen Marley will also join in on the festivities via live stream.
Join us here today in celebration — post your favorite Marley tune, memories, and quotes.
“None but ourselves can free our minds.”
― Bob Marley
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News round up by dopper0189, Black Kos Managing Editor
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Except it’s not really failure. It’s actually unwillingness to communicate, fear of what communication might mean. After all, if you communicate, you might understand some painful truths — and then where would you be?
That’s why discussing race with a white person is often one of the most vexing things an African-American person can do. You quickly come to understand that understanding is the last thing they want.
Take “Black Lives Matter.” Those words,, if you are black, are both an assertion of self-evident truth and a way of saying you are sick of unarmed people like you being killed under color of authority while juries and judges shrug and look away.
That message would seem to be clear as mountain air. Which, for many white Americans, is precisely what’s wrong with it. So they do everything they can not to comprehend.
They pretend confusion: “Black lives matter? Don’t all lives matter? Are you saying black lives are more important?”
They rationalize: “It’s not the cop’s fault. If the man had stopped moving/talking/breathing hard, he wouldn’t have been shot!”
They feign outrage: “Black Lives Matter is an anti-police terrorist group. They’re the black Ku Klux Klan.”
At some point, you begin wondering if the words you hear in your head are coming out in English. How is it you’re both speaking the same language, but you’re doing such a miserable job of being understood?
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Régine Chassagne was standing barefoot in her rambling New Orleans home on a recent weekday, showing members of the Preservation Hall Jazz Band how to play the horn parts for her latest musical project.
It was a galloping Carnival anthem played in the Haitian style and sung largely in Haitian Creole, a language the jazz players did not understand. Ms. Chassagne, a Canadian-born daughter of Haitian exiles, described their parts with swooping hand gestures. At one point, she told them to play “like fireworks — poof!”
The jazzmen, masters of translating emotion into sound, nodded along, unfazed.
Ms. Chassagne, 41, is a founder of the rock group Arcade Fire, a French speaker of mixed racial heritage who grew up in Montreal playing the piano to old Louis Armstrong recordings. More recently, she has become a prominent advocate for the Haitian people and for a Haitian culture that has had an outsize, if not always recognizable, influence on New Orleans, where she and her husband, Win Butler, have lived for about three years.
For this year’s Carnival season, the period of revelry before Lent, Ms. Chassagne and Mr. Butler, the Arcade Fire frontman, will highlight their adopted city’s Haitian connections with the kind of primer its residents readily understand: a raucous procession by the couple’s Haitian-themed Mardi Gras troupe, the Krewe du Kanaval. Founded in collaboration with the New Orleans jazz hub Preservation Hall and rounded out by local and Haitian musicians, the krewe plans to parade through the streets of the French Quarter and Treme on Tuesday, a week before Mardi Gras, and put on a free street party.
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Former President Bill Clinton is lending his convening powers and the Clinton Foundation’s resources to help the hurricane-struck Caribbean as it struggles to rebuild months after hurricanes Irma and Maria.
At the request of leaders in Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, Dominica and Antigua and Barbuda, the Clinton Foundation said Thursday that it will launch a new organization — the Action Network on Post-Disaster Recovery — on behalf of the two U.S. territories and two eastern Caribbean nations to secure long-term investments to help. The first meeting will be held April 3 at the University of Miami with 300 to 400 representatives expected from businesses, government and non-governmental organizations.
“Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and the Caribbean community are in need, and we must answer that call,” Clinton said in a statement. “Together with leaders from government, business, and civil society, we can demonstrate what is possible when we come together and bring our collective will and resources to bear on this crisis. We have a responsibility to act, for the people who are still suffering, and for all the future generations in the region.”
On Wednesday, Clinton presided over a meeting in New York where representatives of some of the governments and others involved in the recovery detailed the needs of the islands. Following the meeting, Clinton announced commitments to rebuild schools and homes in Dominica; the installation of solar equipment at primary care clinics in Puerto Rico; and the distribution of remote Zika testing for pregnant women across the region. He and others hope to build on those commitments as they solicit additional investments in the areas of energy, infrastructure, health, education and economic development. Clinton plans to visit Dominica and the U.S. Virgin Islands next week to see recovery efforts firsthand.
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Most people know about the Nazi Holocaust, the murder of 6 million Jews and 6 million others: communist, Gypsies, socialists, disabled people and LGBT people. Very few people remember Germany had African colonies and black immigrants. Dream Differed: The Holocaust’s forgotten black victims – the ‘Rhineland Bastards’
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Alongside the big narrative of the Holocaust there are a myriad of small, individual stories and testimonies that help illustrate and shed light on the cruelty and barbarity of the Nazi regime.
One such account is the story of what happened to Germany’s tiny black population.
Primo Levi once wrote, “this is a story interwoven with freezing dawns”. Some may know their story, I certainly didn’t.
Tucked away inside Hitler’s anti-Semitic diatribe, Mein Kampf, there is the following passage:
It was, and is, the Jew who brought negroes to the Rhine, brought them with the same aim and with deliberate intent to destroy the white race he hates by persistent bastardisation, to hurl it from the cultural and political heights it has attained, and to ascend them as its masters.
This was not entirely a figment of his imagination; there were a small number of young black children of African heritage living in the Rhineland.
Like most west European countries, by the 17th century, Germany had a small black population. The modern state of Germany was founded in 1871.
The number of black people living in Germany increased from 1870 onwards. They came mainly from Germany’s small colonies in Africa and south east Asia; they were students, artisans, entertainers, former soldiers, low-level colonial officials, such as tax collectors, who had worked for the imperial colonial government.
The black population of Germany at the time of the Third Reich was 20,000 – 25,000 out of a total population of over 65 million.
Even before the Nazis took power in 1933, Germany’s black population faced racial discrimination and violence. Most government, religious and colonial officials refused to register interracial marriages or births. The state promoted eugenics, and popularised arguments about the inferiority of dual-heritage children.
Following the defeat of Germany in the First World War, the Allies stripped Germany of its colonies. Also as part of the war reparations (under the Versailles Treaty) the Allies occupied the Rhineland in western Germany.
Firpo Carr in Germany’s Black Holocaust: 1890-1945, estimates that over 200,000 French troops occupied the Rhineland region. They included a number black colonial troops.
Some of these African Rhineland-based soldiers married German women and raised their children as German; other German women had children by African soldiers outside of marriage.
Estimates vary, but there were over 800 dual-heritage children living in the Rhineland region. The Nazis and some sections of the press labeled these children “Rhineland Bastards” or “Rhineland Mischlingers” (mixing their blood with “alien” races).
The term “Rhineland Bastard” is of course vile. It both articulated the Nazis’ biological construction of race and colonial conceptions of race and racial mixture that were seen as posing a threat to “white” superiority.
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In November 1865—barely six months after Appomattox, and three weeks before the official ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment—the New York Tribune’s front page bore a provocative headline: “South Carolina Re-establishing Slavery.”
The story laid out the new system being put into place in most of the former Confederacy—“Black Codes,” criminal laws targeting black citizens, coupling a long list of minor offenses with a schedule of prohibitive fines. If a black defendant could not pay the fine, he or she was to be “contracted out” to work off the “debt” for some white employer. (In some of the codes, a “debtor’s” black children would also be “apprenticed,” with preference given to the families of their former “masters.”)
The new system, a Confederate veteran explained to Chicago Tribunecorrespondent Sydney Andrews, would “be called ‘involuntary servitude for the punishment of crime,’ but it won’t differ much from slavery.”
This history—the ardent and persistent embrace by Southern racists of the criminal justice system as a means of racial domination—gives me a somewhat jaundiced view of state laws barring convicted felons from voting. They are a heritage of the old slave-power mindset, and have no business marring politics in a 21st century democracy. By and large, as my grandmother used to say, “they make me tired.”
Florida’s felon-disfranchisement scheme plainly has wearied U.S. District Judge Mark Walker; on Thursday he announced that the state’s system violates the Constitution and ordered the parties to a lawsuit to propose a remedy by February 12.
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