On February 6th, Bob Marley would be 62.
Not long ago, I wrote a diary for the anniversary of John Lennon's death. I said that it was the Beatles above all who took Rock and Roll from being the dominant American music to being the dominant World music. If that's true, then it was surely Bob Marley who took Rock and Roll to the next level, helping birth and popularize World Music. I'd like to think that he was a prophet of the 21st century.
copyright paul kane 2007 all rights reserved
So, won't you come with me;
I'll take you to a land of liberty
Where we can live - live a good, good life
And be free.
400 Years
High Times said about Bob Marley
Marley ... has turned out to be much more than reggae's king. Polls have shown the singer and writer of Lively Up Yourself and Three Little Birds is held in more universal esteem than Elvis Presley, the Beatles, Madonna or Sinatra.
The BBC named his song One Love the anthem of the millennium. In 1999, Time magazine called his opus Exodus the album of the century.
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"One Love" is such an amazing song. It could have been written for us today. I believe it WAS meant for us today. And it's not just a call for people to come together. It's also a call for people to find it in their hearts to forgive, maybe even to redeem, the worst amongst us:
One Love! One Heart!
Let's get together and feel all right.
...
Is there a place for the hopeless sinner,
Who has hurt all mankind just to save his own beliefs?
...
As it was in the beginning (One Love!);
So shall it be in the end (One Heart!),
...
Let's get together to fight this Holy Armagiddyon (One Love!),
So when the Man comes there will be no, no doom (One Song!).
Have pity on those whose chances grows t'inner;
There ain't no hiding place from the Father of Creation.
Sayin': One Love! What about the One Heart? (One Heart!)
What about the - ? Let's get together and feel all right.
...
One Love
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copyright paul kane 2007 all rights reserved
I drew this as an attempt to portray Bob Marley leading the innocent spirit of humanity, like an orphaned child, out of the darkness of Babylon:
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I can't remember how or when I first became aware of Bob Marley. I first became aware of Jamaica as a source of music during a summer art camp. This was in the early eighties and our painting teacher, who was from England (where reggae was big) screened for us The Harder They Come. Well, I was impressed. I learned two things from it. One was that Jamaica was a musical hotbed. The other was that the music there had it's roots a lot deeper in the pain of society than was typically the case with American music.
Marley came from some the deepest roots of poverty you could come from in Trenchtown In legend, Trenchtown has come to rival places like Five Points and Montmartre as both a symbol of extreme poverty/violence and creativity/expression. Trenchtown was so named because, instead of a sewer, it had a trench running through it. How could one come up with a more potent symbol for the thrown off 'detritus' of society?
Yet, in No Woman No Cry Marley expresses a faith that truth and solidarity can overcome poverty and privation:
...
Said I remember when we used to sit
In the government yard in Trenchtown
Oba, ob-serving the hypocrites
As they would mingle with the good people we meet
Good friends we have had, oh good friends we've lost along the way
...
Said, said, said I remember when we used to sit
In the government yard in Trenchtown
And then Georgie would make the fire light
Log wood burnin' through the night
Then we would cook corn meal porridge
Of which I'll share with you
...
Marley transformed Trenchtown, a symbol for human cruelty and indifference, into a symbol for human solidarity and love; artistic alchemy at its best.
In this difficult place, Trenchtown, in the midst of poverty and crime that Marley, nicknamed Tuff Gong, was not immune from, Marley made the transformational journey that all or most of us long for, whatever our circumstances, becoming not only a Rastafari, but a prophet whose message was so deep that it spoke to all human beings.
the bars could not hold me
force could not control me
they tried to keep me down
but Jah put I around
Duppy Conquerer
He had several mentors in this journey. One who is well known for influencing Marley musically is Joe Higgs . Another who is known for influencing Marley's spirituality is Mortimo Planno .
In I'm Hurting Inside , Marley explores a more personal, but still universal mode:
When I was just a little child (little child)
Happiness was there awhile (there awhile)
And from me it... it slipped one day
Happiness come back I say
...
Say that
Say I'm hurting
And it's no sense
I'm hurting, I'm hurting
Deep inside
Oh good god now
...
Oh, Lord, I'm your weary child
Oh, happiness come back awhile
...
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High Times tribute to Bob Marley
A politically emergent global population has rallied behind Marley. That's why the lion-like image of the Tuff Gong (one of Marley's many nicknames) appears on the T-shirts, baseball caps, flags and posters of Africans, Asians, Latin Americans, American Indians, aboriginal Australians and native Hawaiians -- and in ghettos everywhere. He has become a global icon of the oppressed rising up against oppression.
''Bob lives. He supposedly died in 1981, but never has he been more alive,'' says Vivien Goldman, author of The Book of Exodus: The Making & Meaning of Bob Marley & the Wailers' Album of the Century. ``He's one of the few artists whose records sell more every year, and everywhere you go in the world you see people wearing Bob Marley T-shirts. They might not know anything about his life. They just know he represents a higher essence and the way they would like to live their life.''
Marley determinedly took his message to what we used to call the Third World, not just addressing his message to the oppressed, but literally taking it to them.
With "Them Belly Full (But We Hungry)," "Rebel Music (3 O'Clock Roadblock)" and "Revolution" he laid down his manifesto—and it wasn't all peace and love, but social justice. Even the anthemic "No Woman, No Cry" was a stirring reminiscence of poverty. These were the songs that resounded around the Third World and made Marley into a hero. He was articulating the feelings of the downtrodden across the globe.
...
Although he released two lovely discs beforehand, it would be 1979 before Marley made his most explicit public statement with Survival. "Africa Unite" and "Zimbabwe" showed he was thinking internationally, something few artists did, and the album was, at heart, a call to arms for Africa. He followed it in 1980 with a tour of Africa that cemented his legendary status there, and with Uprising, whose closing "Redemption Song" is still about a wonderful an epitaph as a man can hope to have.
"
http://worldmusic.nationalgeographic...
Along the way, Marley inspired Third World artists to believe that their own music could have a larger audience. Jacobson quotes Paul-Bert Rahasimanana:
When I heard Bob Marley, I understood people around the world might like my music.
The Bob Marley Reader
... But, for all the fame, he was a modest man who believed that, "People want to listen to a message, word from Jah. This could be passed through me or anybody. I am not a leader. Messenger. The words of the songs, not the person, is what attracts people.
http://worldmusic.nationalgeographic...
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With that in mind, while it might feel a little awkward to liberate one's inner Rastafari, it might be a good thing for each of us. By the 'inner Rastafari' I mean the part inside a person that responds to Marley's music and to reggae generally.
copyright paul kane 2007 all rights reserved
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It's not to late to join hands and walk out of Babylon together:
Monday 29 January 2007
New Delhi - Anti-apartheid icon Nelson Mandela joined top leaders, nobel laureates and elder statesmen on Monday calling on the world to reinvent Indian freedom fighter Mahatma Gandhi's non-violent approach to solving conflicts. Mandela, who spent 28 years in prison for fighting white rule before leading South Africa to multi-racial democracy as the country's first black president in 1994, said Gandhi's non-violent approach which won India freedom from British colonial rule 60 years ago was an inspiration.
"His philosophy contributed in no small measure to bringing about a peaceful transformation in South Africa and in healing the destructive human divisions that had been spawned by the abhorrent practice of apartheid," said Mandela.
...
Referring to him as "the sacred warrior," Mandela said the Mahatma combined ethics and morality with a steely resolve that refused to compromise with the oppressor, the British Empire.
...
Sonia Gandhi, president of Indian National Congress, which leads the ruling coalition, joined Mandela and calls by former Polish President Polish Lech Walesa, former Zambian President Kenneth Kaunda, and Bangladesh Nobel Laureate Mohammad Yunus to promote Gandhi's values.
...
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copyright paul kane 2007 all rights reserved
Making a beginning.
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Zion train is coming our way;
The Zion train is coming our way;
...
Which man can save his brother's soul? (save your brother's soul)
Oh man, it's just self control. (oo-hoo-oo!)
Don't gain the world and lose your soul (just don't lose your soul)
Wisdom is better than silver and gold -
To the bridge (ooh-ooh!)
...
Zion Train
Bob Marley lyrics.
Crossposted at http://www.progressivehistorians.com...