tag:theconversation.com,2011:/es/topics/reggae-21175/articles
Reggae – The Conversation
2024-02-05T19:39:15Z
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/220213
2024-02-05T19:39:15Z
2024-02-05T19:39:15Z
From rebel to retail − inside Bob Marley’s posthumous musical and merchandising empire
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/571230/original/file-20240124-17-ohjhpd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=456%2C130%2C4794%2C3343&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Bob Marley performs at a 'Viva Zimbabwe' independence celebration in April 1980.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/jamaican-reggae-musician-bob-marley-plays-guitar-as-he-news-photo/1369621696?adppopup=true">William F. Campbell/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The long-awaited <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ajw425Kuvtw">Bob Marley biopic “One Love”</a> will highlight important moments in the musician’s life – his adolescence in Trench Town, his spiritual growth, <a href="https://www.rollingstone.com/feature/the-night-bob-marley-got-shot-203370/">the attempt on his life</a>. <a href="https://w1.mtsu.edu/media/scholar/profile/18">But as a music industry scholar</a>, I wonder if the film is yet another extension of the Marley marketing machine.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/music/2011/apr/24/bob-marley-funeral-richard-williams">Marley died in 1981</a> at the age of 36. He’d achieved a level of mainstream success unrivaled by other reggae acts, and he did so while challenging global capitalism and speaking to the oppressed.</p>
<p>This image, however, is fundamentally at odds with what has happened to Marley’s name and likeness since his death. </p>
<p>Now you can buy <a href="https://shop.bobmarley.com/collections/bags/products/cannabis-print-backpack">Bob Marley backpacks</a>, <a href="https://shop.bobmarley.com/collections/accessories/products/bob-marley-collage-jigsaw-puzzle">Bob Marley jigsaw puzzles</a> – even <a href="https://shop.bobmarley.com/collections/misc/products/song-pattern-flip-flops">Bob Marley flip-flops</a>.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">The trailer for ‘One Love.’</span></figcaption>
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<p>The accusation of “<a href="https://theconversation.com/sellout-how-political-corruption-shaped-an-american-insult-220520">selling out</a>” could once seriously threaten an artist’s credibility; the insult <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/music/2021/jul/26/why-is-selling-out-ok-now">wields far less power</a> in an era when an artist’s survival <a href="https://www.gemtracks.com/guides/view.php?title=what-is-a-music-endorsement-deal&id=1011">often depends on sponsorship and licensing deals</a>. Meanwhile, a deceased artist’s ongoing earnings are left in the hands of others.</p>
<p>Nonetheless, when a musician as revered as Marley – and whose songs were suffused with messages of liberation, anti-imperialism and anti-capitalism – becomes so commercialized, it’s worth wondering how this happened and whether it threatens his artistic legacy.</p>
<h2>On and off the record</h2>
<p>In its 2023 list of highest-paid dead celebrities, <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/marisadellatto/2023/10/30/highest-paid-dead-celebrities-2023-michael-jackson-elvis-presley-whitney-houston/?sh=2f411dd1504b">Forbes placed Marley in the ninth slot</a>, right behind former Beatles front man John Lennon. According to the publication, Marley earned US$16 million – or rather, his estate did. </p>
<p>Marley’s business affairs are now <a href="https://www.dailystar.co.uk/showbiz/us-showbiz/inside-bob-marleys-fortune-huge-29112952">controlled by family members</a> – the estate – who have made deals with various merchandising and marketing partners, with all parties sharing in the profits. The commercial power of Bob Marley’s name generates the royalties earned by the estate, though precise percentages are not publicly available.</p>
<p>One posthumous musical release, in particular, has been a gold mine: Marley’s “<a href="https://open.spotify.com/album/4qsXcmAgPNSliu6oMQGOQ9">Legend</a>” compilation album. </p>
<p>Released in 1984 and featuring mainstays like “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CRkfqH1r714">Could You Be Loved</a>” and “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s7SYBk-nRiQ">Three Little Birds</a>,” it’s the most successful reggae album of all time. It has sold over 15 million copies in the U.S and has spent more than 800 nonconsecutive weeks on the <a href="https://www.billboard.com/charts/billboard-200/">Billboard 200</a>. Collectively, its tracks have accounted for well over <a href="https://worldmusicviews.com/bob-marley-the-wailers-lead-spotifys-most-streamed-reggae-artist-for-2023-three-years-in-a-row/">4 billion Spotify streams</a>, and its phenomenal success is a key reason that the private music publishing company Primary Wave, which is backed by investors such as BlackRock, <a href="https://www.billboard.com/music/music-news/primary-wave-acquires-share-bob-marley-publishing-catalog-blackrock-blue-mountain-music-8094231/">spent over $50 million</a> to buy a share of Marley’s publishing catalog in 2018. </p>
<p>A series of other albums have been released after Marley’s death. These include “Natural Mystic” (1995); the pop and hip-hop crossover “Chant Down Babylon” (1999); “Africa Unite” (2005); “Uprising Live!” (2014), which features his final concert appearance; the polarizing electronic mashup “Legend Remixed” (2013); “Easy Skanking in Boston ’78” (2015); and the curious “Bob Marley & the Chineke! Orchestra” (2022). </p>
<p>The “Legend” album has earned more than these later releases combined. But the material absent from that record speaks volumes.</p>
<p>In <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/09/arts/music/chris-blackwell-the-islander.html">his 2022 autobiography</a>, Chris Blackwell, the former head of Island Records, the label that brought Marley’s music to mainstream listeners, revealed that “Legend” had been carefully tailored for white mainstream audiences.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A red, yellow and green record featuring the face of a contemplative man with dreadlocks." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/571216/original/file-20240124-27-7nwrye.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/571216/original/file-20240124-27-7nwrye.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/571216/original/file-20240124-27-7nwrye.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/571216/original/file-20240124-27-7nwrye.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/571216/original/file-20240124-27-7nwrye.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/571216/original/file-20240124-27-7nwrye.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/571216/original/file-20240124-27-7nwrye.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">‘Legend’ is the most successful reggae album of all time.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/still-life-of-a-of-a-limited-edition-record-of-bob-marley-news-photo/78869226?adppopup=true">Bob Berg/Getty Images</a></span>
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<p>It achieved this by prioritizing songs centered on themes of love and peace, rather than those about Marley’s revolutionary Afrocentric politics and Rastafarian worldview, which appear on records such as 1979’s “<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survival_(Bob_Marley_and_the_Wailers_album)">Survival</a>.”</p>
<p>On that album’s second track, “<a href="https://genius.com/Bob-marley-and-the-wailers-zimbabwe-lyrics">Zimbabwe</a>,” Marley commends the country’s freedom fighters in their battle against the oppressive Rhodesian regime, declaring, “Every man got a right to decide his own destiny”; he rails against the forces of exploitation and division in “<a href="https://genius.com/Bob-marley-and-the-wailers-top-rankin-lyrics">Top Rankin’</a>” and “<a href="https://genius.com/Bob-marley-and-the-wailers-babylon-system-lyrics">Babylon System</a>”; in “<a href="https://genius.com/Bob-marley-and-the-wailers-survival-lyrics">Survival</a>,” he hails the African world’s “hopes and dreams” and “ways and means”; and “<a href="https://genius.com/Bob-marley-and-the-wailers-wake-up-and-live-lyrics">Wake Up and Live</a>” is a clarion call to spiritual and political awakening.</p>
<p>These tracks don’t appear on “Legend.” In fact, none of the tracks from “Survival” do.</p>
<p>And so four decades after his death, Bob Marley remains the world’s top reggae artist. But it’s his lighter, less controversial fare that’s established him as a global superstar.</p>
<h2>Merchandising a mystic</h2>
<p><a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2023/02/04/spotify-grammys-songwriters-payment-musicians/">In an era of minuscule music royalties</a>, a large portion of that $16 million in earnings also comes from merchandising, which has further watered down Marley’s revolutionary politics and spiritualism. </p>
<p>Thanks to what two writers called “<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/nov/22/marley-natural-legacy-marley-debate">the Disneyfication of all matters Marley</a>,” you can now buy <a href="https://marleycoffee.com/">Bob Marley-themed coffee</a>, <a href="https://www.foodandwine.com/news/ben-and-jerrys-one-love-ice-cream">ice cream</a> and <a href="https://www.vogue.com/article/bob-marley-marley-natural-beauty-botanicals-jamaica">body wash</a>. There’s <a href="https://www.thehouseofmarley.com/">sustainably sourced, Bob Marley-branded audio equipment</a>, in addition to <a href="https://primitiveskate.com/collections/bob-marley">a line of Bob Marley skateboard decks</a>.</p>
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<img alt="Colorful boxes featuring cartoon drawings of Black men smoking." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/571217/original/file-20240124-25-woxyjy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/571217/original/file-20240124-25-woxyjy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/571217/original/file-20240124-25-woxyjy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/571217/original/file-20240124-25-woxyjy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/571217/original/file-20240124-25-woxyjy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/571217/original/file-20240124-25-woxyjy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/571217/original/file-20240124-25-woxyjy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Marley-branded nicotine vape cartridges are displayed next to Snoop Dogg vape cartridges at the 2022 Vaper Expo in Birmingham, England.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/disposable-flie-vapes-featuring-snoop-dogg-and-bob-marley-news-photo/1431608678?adppopup=true">John Keeble/Getty Images</a></span>
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<p>The cannabis brand <a href="https://www.billboard.com/music/music-news/marley-cannabis-brand-launch-6866955/#!">Marley Natural</a> shows how the Marley name has become commercially intertwined with corporate America.</p>
<p>It’s funded by the American private equity company <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-30110235">Privateer Holdings</a>, which the Marley family had approached to gauge their interest in collaboration for the product’s release. The creators of the Starbucks logo <a href="https://www.hecklerbranding.com/names-by-ha">were hired to design the logo</a> for Marley Natural, further underlining the venture’s commercial ties. </p>
<p>Aside from the obvious fact that these associations pay no heed to Bob Marley’s anti-capitalist messages, I find it bitterly ironic that the private equity firm calls itself “Privateer.” <a href="https://www.rmg.co.uk/stories/topics/golden-age-piracy">Privateers</a> were commissioned ships involved in plundering and murder across the Caribbean. They are among the “old pirates” Marley sang about in his mournful “<a href="https://www.lyrics.com/lyric/4003768/Bob+Marley/Redemption+Song">Redemption Song</a>.”</p>
<p>While the Marley family <a href="https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210607005453/en/Marley-Natural%C2%AE-Flagship-Cannabis-Retail-Store-to-Open-at-the-Bob-Marley-Museum-in-Jamaica">claims that Bob would have approved</a> of the cannabis enterprise, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/nov/22/marley-natural-legacy-marley-debate">critics see indiscriminate mass-marketing</a>.</p>
<p>The artist’s popular songs and lyrics have also been adopted as marketing tools to sell products that bear little relation to Marley’s music and message. </p>
<p>In 2001, his daughter Cedella, who runs parts of the estate, released a fashion line called Catch a Fire. The name comes from the Wailers’ first international album, which the group released in 1973. On it, tracks like “Slave Driver,” “Concrete Jungle” and “400 Years” connect the poverty of the present to the injustices of the past.</p>
<p>Can T-shirts and other apparel help spread these messages? Perhaps. </p>
<p>But it’s hard to argue that Marley-themed <a href="https://www.cedellamarley.com/portfolio/2015/11/23/cedella-marley-launches-a-new-sauce-line">hot sauce</a> does.</p>
<h2>The reel situation of ‘One Love’</h2>
<p>Critiquing any aspect of Bob Marley’s legacy can elicit defensive responses. The estate <a href="https://www.billboard.com/music/music-news/bob-marley-75th-birthday-billboard-cover-story-interview-2020-9363748/#!">has long portrayed</a> the rampant commercialization of the Marley name and image as an important way to sustain and spread the artist’s ideals.</p>
<p>However, I think it’s important to ensure that the artistic and cultural values embedded in his music do not become clouded in a haze of consumerism. </p>
<p>While many of the commercial enterprises tied to his name reportedly raise <a href="https://bobmarleyfoundation.org/">money for Jamaican youth</a>, I’d hesitate to say that this serves as a complete counterbalance to the erosion of Marley’s messages.</p>
<p>The “One Love” movie backed by Paramount Pictures – <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt8521778/fullcredits/?ref_=tt_cl_sm">with four Marleys listed as producers</a> – will certainly extend the mythologies and harsh realities of Bob Marley’s all-too-brief life, which was <a href="https://www.skincancer.org/blog/bob-marley-should-not-have-died-from-melanoma">cut short by melanoma</a>. But it’s also a massive international marketing vehicle for the sale of even more officially branded merchandise.</p>
<p>On the one hand, the fact that people so eagerly buy products plastered with Marley’s face and words reflects the profound connection he continues to have with his listeners. But on the other hand, it’s difficult squaring Marley – a symbol of post-colonialism and anti-capitalism – with branding collaborations and private equity firms. </p>
<p>His music means so much more. And his anti-imperialist messages, as warmongers threaten basic human rights around the world, are perhaps needed now more than ever.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/220213/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Mike Alleyne does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
How did a musician whose songs were suffused with messages of anti-capitalism and anti-imperialism become so commercialized?
Mike Alleyne, Professor Emeritus of Recording Industry (Popular Music Studies & Music Business), Middle Tennessee State University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/209363
2023-07-19T12:25:10Z
2023-07-19T12:25:10Z
Rastafarians gathering for the 131st birthday of Emperor Haile Selassie are still grappling with his reported death in 1975
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/537834/original/file-20230717-245914-6k5hle.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=67%2C14%2C4910%2C3308&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Rastafarians drum and sing during a special prayer and worship meeting at Menengai forest in Kenya.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/adherents-of-the-rastafari-sect-play-a-drum-and-sing-during-news-photo/1246795428?adppopup=true">James Wakibia/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The week of July 23, 2023, thousands of Rastafarians, known for their dreadlocks and for treating cannabis as a sacrament, will gather in Jamaica to <a href="https://www.reonline.org.uk/festival_event/birthday-of-haile-selassie-i/">celebrate the birth of Haile Selassie I, emperor of Ethiopia</a>. </p>
<p>Estimated to number between <a href="https://www.worlddata.info/religions/rastafari.php">700,000 and 1,000,000 globally</a>, Rastafarian communities are <a href="https://academic.oup.com/book/595">located on almost every continent</a> today. Their beliefs are spread through migration, reggae music, as well as print, visual and digital media.</p>
<p>The first Rastafarian communities emerged sometime around 1931 in eastern Jamaica. The first two generations of Rastafarians were <a href="https://nyupress.org/9780814767474/becoming-rasta/">predominantly from African-descended people</a> who belonged to working-class communities. </p>
<p>Many Christians believe that Jesus Christ was both human and divine, and will return to the Earth to reign over a righteous kingdom of his chosen people. Similarly, Rastafarians are of the view that Emperor Selassie is God, or Jah, who manifested in human form, and that they are God’s chosen people. They borrow generously from the King James Bible, <a href="https://www.uwipress.com/9789766404093/let-us-start-with-africa/">braiding their theology</a> around Black and African identity and culture.</p>
<p>Since the mid-1970s, however, <a href="https://www.routledge.com/The-Rastafari-Movement-A-North-American-and-Caribbean-Perspective/Barnett/p/book/9781138682153">Rastafarian views on the emperor’s divinity have varied</a>, in part because Emperor Selassie had died but also because of an influx of new adherents of varied class, racial and national backgrounds. </p>
<p>Being a Rastafarian, and having <a href="https://education.temple.edu/about/faculty-staff/charles-a-price-tum91324">researched and studied the faith community</a>, I’ve seen how growing diversity among them has also brought varied views on the former emperor’s divinity.</p>
<h2>God as monarch</h2>
<p>The Rastafari believe that the prophecy of the New Testament of the Bible was fulfilled when the Ethiopian nobleman King Ras Tafari Makonnen, born in the Ethiopian province of Harar in 1892, <a href="https://www.cdamm.org/articles/rastafari">was crowned the 225th emperor of Ethiopia on November 2, 1930</a>.</p>
<p>Rastafarians believe that the king <a href="https://www.ohioswallow.com/book/Emperor+Haile+Selassie">traces his lineage</a> to the Old Testament’s King David of the Tribe of Judah, and to David’s son, King Solomon. The “<a href="https://www.sacred-texts.com/chr/kn/kn000-1.htm">Kebra Negast</a>,” a 14th-century Ethiopian literary epic, tells the story of how the Queen of Sheba visited Solomon, and together they had a son, Menelik I, during ancient times. Menelik I was Ethiopia’s first emperor. </p>
<p>King Ras Tafari assumed the name Emperor Haile Selassie I, or Might of the Holy Trinity, along with commanding titles such as the King of Kings and the Conquering Lion of Judah. </p>
<p>Rastafarians view the king’s coronation in 1930, his titles and his lineage as fulfilling a prophecy in the Book of Revelation. According to Chapter 5, a book of “seven seals” reveals events of the apocalypse many Christians believe will begin once Christ returns – but only the “Root of David,” the “Conquering Lion,” can open it, <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/265740442_The_Cultural_Production_of_a_Black_Messiah_Ethiopianism_and_the_Rastafari">each revealing events between Christ’s crucifixion and return</a>. </p>
<p>The Rastafari, named for their god – King Ras Tafari – grew from a tiny community to number in the tens of thousands in Jamaica by the 1990s, as I explain in my 2022 book “<a href="https://nyupress.org/9781479888122/rastafari/">Rastafari: The Evolution of a People and Their Identity</a>.”</p>
<h2>The travails of worshiping a Black god</h2>
<p>Many Jamaicans, especially the elites, ridiculed the Rastafari for anointing an African monarch as a deity. They sought at every turn <a href="https://nyupress.org/9781479888122/rastafari/">to prove the Rastafari ludicrous</a>. From the 1930s into the 1970s the Rastafari were scorned by their fellow Jamaicans, subjected to discrimination and violence. Many Rastafari were <a href="https://nyupress.org/9781479888122/rastafari/">imprisoned, beaten</a>, and many <a href="https://www.uwipress.com/9789766404093/let-us-start-with-africa/">men forcibly shaven for their beliefs</a>.</p>
<p>Things started to change in 1966 when Emperor Selassie visited Jamaica and <a href="https://www.life.com/people/haile-selassie-in-jamaica-photos-from-a-rastafari-milestone/">hundreds of Rastafari swarmed the Norman Manley Airport in Kingston</a> to greet the emperor. He caused a greater stir by inviting the Rastafari to join him during official state ceremonies. </p>
<p>The emperor’s visit conferred respect on the Rastafari, attracting new converts, such as <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/style/1982/10/24/rita-marley-heir-to-the-reggae-kingdom/c6a105a5-f67f-4c70-8a4d-8db0d42e5285/">Rita Marley</a>, reggae music singer and wife of reggae superstar Bob Marley. The Rastafari became paragons of Black identity, culture and history. </p>
<p>In 1975, press announcements that Emperor Selassie was dead sparked an existential crisis for the Rastafari. In a coup led by the Ethiopian politician and soldier Mengistu Haile Mariam, the emperor was <a href="https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/distributed/K/bo22344459.html">imprisoned and allegedly murdered</a>. </p>
<p>Some critics asserted that the Rastafari finally <a href="https://nyupress.org/9781479888122/rastafari/">had been proved foolish</a> and that their God was dead. Bob Marley rebuffed the critics in his acclaimed song, “Jah Live” (meaning God lives).</p>
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<h2>What happens if God dies?</h2>
<p>The Rastafari responded to the announcement in several ways. Some <a href="https://streaming-eu.mpg.de/de/institute/eth/mediathek/video/haile_selassie/HaileSelassieFilmProject_Part_II_.mp4">denied Emperor Selassie was dead</a>, insisting that God cannot die, and no body was found to confirm the death. Years later, bones said to be those of Emperor Selassie were recovered from a pit beneath Menelik Palace in Ethiopia, but never confirmed <a href="https://streaming-eu.mpg.de/de/institute/eth/mediathek/video/haile_selassie/HaileSelassieFilmProject_Part_I_.mp4">to be the emperor’s</a>. </p>
<p>Others said <a href="https://nyupress.org/9781479888122/rastafari/">only time would reveal the meaning</a> of the emperor’s disappearance, since God’s ways are beyond the ken of mortals.</p>
<p>Another view was that the emperor’s disappearance signaled the beginning of a new era on Earth, much like Christ rising from death. In the new dispensation, these followers believed, the Rastafari must act as the emperor’s anointed and must continue the traditions, knowledge and communities they have birthed. </p>
<p>Some others believed that the emperor was worthy of veneration but not as God. This had a lot to do with the <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/307810153_The_many_faces_of_Rasta_Doctrinal_Diversity_within_the_Rastafari_Movement">increasing diversity of the Rastafarians in Jamaica</a> and internationally. </p>
<p>In Jamaica, middle-class Rastafarians known as the Twelve Tribes of Israel are more likely to subscribe to this view, as are <a href="https://www.proquest.com/openview/81909e63b12a42187d8c9d31459150f8/1?pq-origsite=gscholar&cbl=1636335">many Africans who identify as Rastafarians</a>. However, the doctrine of the Emperor as God remains predominant.</p>
<p>There are also those who continue to wonder why so many Rastafari reject the idea that the emperor is dead. As I argue in my book, claiming that the emperor still lives, without conclusive evidence, requires faith – just as it does for Christians – who believe that Jesus Christ is immortal.</p>
<p><em>This article has been updated to correct the date of Haile Selassie’s reported death.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/209363/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Charles A. Price received funding from National Science Foundation, Ford Foundation, W.K.Kellogg Foundation, National Community Development Institute, Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research.
He is affiliated with Highlander Research & Education Center.
</span></em></p>
The first Rastafarian communities emerged around 1931 in eastern Jamaica. Today, there are over 700,000 Rastafarian communities located on almost every continent.
Charles A. Price, Associate Professor of Education and Human Development, Temple University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/206133
2023-06-08T11:44:41Z
2023-06-08T11:44:41Z
The Windrush dance revolution that transformed Britain – from Birmingham’s basements to Notting Hill carnival
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/530405/original/file-20230606-7937-utigwl.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=14%2C17%2C1982%2C1467&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Reggae, dancehall, and identity: how Jamaican music transformed British society.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Holly Squire/Canva</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Growing up in Birmingham in the early 1960s, I am part of the African Caribbean generation that <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/windrush-52562">migrated to Britain</a> between the 1940s and 1980s. Commonly known as the “<a href="https://digpodcast.org/2022/03/06/windrush-generation/">Windrush generation</a>”, our arrival in the UK marked a significant turning point in the country’s social, artistic and economic landscape.</p>
<p>Back in those days, nights out in Birmingham revolved around paid entry into <a href="https://writersmosaic.org.uk/content/dancing-identity-in-a-strange-land-h-patten/">“blues” or “shubeens”</a> (house parties). They were often held in unconventional venues, from basements and abandoned buildings to church and school halls. These events took place up and down the country – black bodies dancing and expressing themselves through music and “riddim” (rhythm).</p>
<p>These venues became the birthplace of black clubs, stage shows and major international events such as the Notting Hill carnival and the Mobo Awards ceremony. In these spaces, we challenged the <a href="https://theconversation.com/black-history-is-still-largely-ignored-70-years-after-empire-windrush-reached-britain-98431">exclusion that African and Caribbean people</a> faced relating to established white-owned social venues.</p>
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<p><em>This article is part of our <a href="https://theconversation.com/topics/windrush-75-139220?utm_source=TCUK&utm_medium=linkback&utm_campaign=Windrush75&utm_content=InArticleTop">Windrush 75 series</a>, which marks the 75th anniversary of the HMT Empire Windrush arriving in Britain. The stories in this series explore the history and impact of the hundreds of passengers who disembarked to help rebuild after the second world war.</em></p>
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<p>Reflecting back on my childhood, I vividly remember attending Jamaican dance sessions where black bodies performed seemingly unconscious and spiritually symbolic dance rituals. This represented a form of resistance. But it was also about identity affirmation and survival. </p>
<p>Dance sessions involved setting up massive speakers, amplifiers, turntables and other sonic components that produced the pulsating music of the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aASQlbktGkc">sound systems</a>. Operated by talented <a href="https://research.gold.ac.uk/id/eprint/22858/1/502410.pdf">deejays (DJs), selectors and MCs</a>, these musical artists transformed ordinary British locations into dynamic dance spaces.</p>
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<p>Through dance, we resisted <a href="https://repository.canterbury.ac.uk/item/8910q/the-spirituality-of-reggae-dancehall-dance-vocabulary-a-spiritual-corporeal-practice-in-jamaican-dance">cultural marginalisation and asserted our presence</a> in the face of oppression. I recall witnessing people performing the ska dance, characterised by energetic arm movements and knee-raising, to the popular song <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N7lCJg3WoSc">My Boy Lollipop</a> by Millie Small, which topped the UK charts in 1964. </p>
<p>In darkened rooms, bodies would sensuously move together, intertwining their pelvises in <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uyJwZwkqg8U">figure-eight, half or full circles</a>. Side-stepping, bending and straightening their knees, they performed the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5_EybfMcRt4">reggae bounce</a>. </p>
<p>These dance movements were performed to songs like Janet Kay’s 1979 anthem <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qCVR5XR04Mo">Silly Games</a>, which propelled the <a href="https://theconversation.com/small-axe-what-steve-mcqueen-got-right-and-wrong-about-lovers-rock-151068">lover’s rock</a> reggae genre beyond its African Caribbean audience base to global markets including China and Japan. </p>
<p>Dance and music were integral to our cultural celebrations marking the major lifecycle milestones, from christenings and weddings to birthdays and funerals.</p>
<h2>Contributing far and wide</h2>
<p>The influence of African Caribbean popular culture extended beyond our communities and made significant contributions to British society as a whole. For instance, Lord Kitchener’s calypso <a href="https://www.facebook.com/museumoflondon/videos/2446657958966637/">London is the Place for Me</a>, played on the decks of the SS Empire Windrush upon its arrival in 1948, expressed the dreams and aspirations of many who migrated to Britain. </p>
<p>Invited by the British government, African Caribbean people settled in the “Mother country”. We became an <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-windrush-generation-how-a-resilient-caribbean-community-made-a-lasting-contribution-to-british-society-204571">indispensable part of the workforce</a>, contributing to various sectors such as the NHS, transportation, business and infrastructural developments.</p>
<p><a href="https://theconversation.com/notting-hill-carnival-why-partying-is-the-perfect-antidote-to-austerity-43509">The Notting Hill carnival</a>, born out of our resistance to oppression and violence following the murder of <a href="https://www.ourmigrationstory.org.uk/oms/murder-in-notting-hill">Kelso Cochrane</a> in 1959, became one of the greatest African Caribbean cultural contributions to British society.</p>
<p>Cochrane, an innocent black man walking home, was killed at the hands of white youths in Notting Hill. This ignited the UK’s first race riots, which directly influenced Trinidad and Tobago-born journalist and activist <a href="https://www.bristol.ac.uk/history/public-engagement/blackhistory/snapshots/claudiajones/">Claudia Jones</a> to set up the London Caribbean Carnival – a precursor to the Notting Hill carnival that was established in 1966.</p>
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<p>Today, “Carnival” is not only a vibrant celebration of our heritage but a significant contributor to the <a href="https://www.visitlondon.com/things-to-do/event/9023471-notting-hill-carnival">British economy and tourism industry</a>. Reggae’s sound-system culture was incorporated into this annual event, amplifying its reach beyond calypso, soca (an offshoot of calypso) and steel pan culture to encompass many forms of artistry.</p>
<p>Dance movements within reggae and dancehall music have become powerful expressions of cultural identity and personhood. The signature “whining” or “wining” movement, characterised by circling or rotating the pelvis while rocking it back and forth in a tumbling action, exemplifies Jamaican pride and self-worth.</p>
<p>Similarly, the iconic <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GIXdI9mfDas">Bogle dance</a>, created by master dancer Gerald “Bogle” Levy in Jamaica and adopted within British dance spaces in the 1990s, features undulating arms and bodies across the dancehall space to the hit song Bogle, by Buju Banton. </p>
<p>Through reggae and dancehall, black bodies in Britain confidently occupied central positions within popular culture. We challenged gender stereotypes, body stigmatisation and the limitations imposed on African Caribbean bodies due to race.</p>
<h2>Freedom and empowerment</h2>
<p>The freedom and empowerment found in reggae and dancehall culture has also influenced the <a href="https://theconversation.com/black-artists-dont-just-make-hip-hop-why-recognition-of-metal-punk-rock-and-emo-by-mobo-is-long-overdue-195583">growth of other marginalised communities</a> in Britain. It played a crucial role in the development of genres such as hip-hop, punk rock, jungle, garage, drum ‘n’ bass, Afrobeat, reggaeton (South America), kwaito or di gong (South Africa), and hip-life (West Africa). </p>
<p>The wider influence of reggae, dancehall and African Caribbean culture can be seen throughout British culture: in television programmes, radio shows and advertisements that incorporate Jamaican slang, iconic songs and dance moves.</p>
<p>Examples include the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M4kOj5MZlg8">Vitalite advert</a>, featuring Desmond Dekker’s The Israelites, Fairy Liquid’s use of Bob Marley’s <a href="https://vimeo.com/489047177">Don’t Worry</a> in their ads, and the BBC’s original Test match cricket theme, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=67xXbTaQlKI">Soul Limbo</a>. Alongside the everyday use of Jamaican and African Caribbean slang terms and phrases such as “big up”, “shout out to” (acknowledging individuals), “bouyaka!” (signifying gunshots), “blood” or “fam” (meaning family), are actions including fist pumps, wining and twerking.</p>
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<p>Of course, life in the UK has not been without its challenges. The Windrush scandal of 2017 exposed that many from the Windrush generation had been excluded from British society, due to the UK government’s “<a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/hostile-environment-44885">hostile environment</a>” legislation. This intended to cut off undocumented migrants from access to any public services, including healthcare. </p>
<p>But despite such oppression, our cultural and economic contributions remain intertwined with British history. And we continue to shape the UK’s cultural landscape, today and into the future.</p>
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<p>You can <em><a href="https://bit.ly/3DdOERY">download the e-book here</a></em>. Thank you for your interest.</p>
<hr><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/206133/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>'H' Patten receives funding from the ISRF. </span></em></p>
Nights out dancing! How African and Caribbean music and dance have shaped British culture.
'H' Patten, Associate Lecturer in African Caribbean Dance, Goldsmiths, University of London
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/168445
2021-09-30T14:29:35Z
2021-09-30T14:29:35Z
The hidden history of the Black British soundtrack to football
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/424017/original/file-20210930-16-1thsgtr.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=292%2C17%2C1080%2C903&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption"></span> </figcaption></figure><p>Many a football supporter relates to Bob Marley and The Wailers’ <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dSefdNmejlk">Three Little Birds</a> and its reassuring line “every little thing gonna be alright”. For most fans the early stages of a new season harbour a mixture of hope and trepidation. </p>
<p>Three Little Birds has echoed around Ajax Amsterdam’s Johan Cruyff Arena for over a decade. Recently the sentiments were sewn into the fabric of their <a href="https://www.adidas.co.uk/ajax-amsterdam-21-22-third-jersey/GT9559.html">third kit</a>, which featured three small birds and the manufacturer’s iconic stripes contrasting in the red, gold and green colours of Rastafarianism on the black jersey. </p>
<p>This meeting of football and black sound cultures is truly global. Back in the UK – where the <a href="https://www.goal.com/en/news/ajax-bob-marley-third-kit-three-little-birds/1264qdm6bw5bz1kvwpi4qwxn87">Ajax association was born</a> – in 2019 Coventry City released a black-and-white checked <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/50027298">kit</a> and a <a href="https://www.ccfcstore.com/collections/collections/two-tone">range of merchandise</a> to commemorate the Two Tone scene – established in Coventry in the late 1970s as a multiracial youth movement combining Jamaican ska, British punk and anti-racist politics. </p>
<p>Similarly in 2019, the yellow and black stripes on <a href="https://mixmag.net/feature/manchester-city-fc-hacienda-kit-puma-designer-interview">Manchester City’s</a> jersey paid homage to the Hacienda, a foundational nightclub in bringing African American electronic music to Manchester in the 1980s.</p>
<p>The designs of these official kits represent just one element of the relationship between football cultures and forms of black music. In <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/13675494211015332">our research</a> we explore the history of these sonic threads and demonstrate that the stories they tell are often more complex than those woven into these kits.</p>
<h2>English football and the sounds of the Caribbean</h2>
<p>Crowd noise at Test Match cricket has long demonstrated the importance of sound and sport to migrant communities in the UK. At matches you’ll hear steel pans, horns and chants articulating cultural identity as much as team support. The story of football, music and the migrant experience, however, is less well known. </p>
<p>The ground-breaking <a href="https://honestjons.com/label/artist/London_Is_The_Place_For_Me/release/8_Lord_Kitchener_in_Englrand_1948-1962">London is the Place for Me</a> collections by Honest Jon’s record label include several football calypsos documenting the sport’s ever-present place in the migrant experience. While cricket-based calypsos focused primarily on the wider British Caribbean experience, football calypsos tended to be localised. This can be heard in songs like The <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZfanvTHqC0w">Manchester Football Double</a> and the Manchester United Calypso, which celebrate the wealth of the city’s football heritage. </p>
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<p>In subsequent generations, reggae narrated and soundtracked aspects of the football experience. The first reggae track on football was Clement Bushay Set’s <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5_y6FyY5Ups">Football Reggae</a> in 1972, which included crowd noise, and celebrated both Derby County’s title triumph and the playing styles of various other professional teams. Like many other early songs from this period it was a tale of love between football and its fans in the Caribbean diaspora.</p>
<p>However, in the 1970s and 80s, reggae’s music and messages evolved becoming more critical, presenting listeners with assertive black, post-colonial political statements. This can be seen in LP artwork of the more dub-styled internationally-focused Scientist Wins the World Cup in 1982, which shows a cartoon of a fictional all-black team beating England in the World Cup Final.</p>
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<p><a href="https://trojanrecords.com/artist/dennis-alcapone/">Dennis Alcapone</a>, the Jamaican DJ, recorded World Cup Football in 1981. It was a year of uprisings in multicultural communities around England such as the <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/newsround/50035769">Brixton uprisings</a>, which were the result of rising tensions between the local community and the police. Alcapone used his lyrics to celebrate the legendary Brazil team of that era, while also calling on the then England manager to pick black players such as Cyrille Regis and Garth Crooks. </p>
<p>This move into the national football arena was replicated by Asher Senator, who also proposed an all-black England team in the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vktubqjN-KY">Big Match</a> from 1985, another year of black British rebellions. The British reggae artist <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8mzo0fxwcLI">Macka B</a> situated these trends within the wider African diaspora, penning songs about the Cameroonian and Jamaican World Cup teams in the 1990s.</p>
<p>These songs show how the historical connections between football and reggae are complex. Earlier songs often involved black music being appropriated or assimilated for the benefit of <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OTn01jjEFfY">fans or record producers</a>. They are usually without critique and full of celebration. Later tracks represent black resistance to white power structures in sport and society.</p>
<h2>Football, music and a multicultural future</h2>
<p>In 2021, football fleetingly dominated the national consciousness with England reaching the final of Euro 2020. The team were a shining testament to the diversity of England, full of players willing to speak out for what they believed in and giving voice to a more inclusive <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/football/2021/sep/28/benjamin-zephaniah-footballers-have-a-voice-and-a-platform-they-arent-taking-injustice-any-more">football culture</a>. </p>
<p>This was demonstrated by players taking the knee against racism before every match – despite much pushback. They brought the country together in a celebration of the regional multiculturalism of England. Football’s TV coverage has echoed this sentiment in recent years, featuring dynamic associations between football and the sounds of multicultural England. This is reflective of the history of the sport’s relationship with reggae and calypso in decades before. </p>
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<p>Black British rapper <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/av/football/48314729">Ms Banks’</a> <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-as0GVWjaIA&ab_channel=BBCSport">World Cup</a> rap featured throughout the BBC’s coverage of the 2019 women’s tournament. ITV’s main theme for Euro 2020 was Michael Kiwanuka’s <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ivvs_qL6t_c&ab_channel=MichaelKiwanukaVEVO">You Ain’t The Problem</a>; while rapper Ocean Wisdom’s “<a href="https://www.itv.com/presscentre/press-releases/itv-signals-good-times-start-here-it-launches-euro-2020-promo-campaign">Don</a>” flowed across their coverage too. Hip-Hop duo Krept and Konan also recorded Ole (<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u_Xluw2M6aA&ab_channel=GRMDaily">We are England ’21</a>), with an accompanying video featuring Wembley Stadium and Grenfell Tower.</p>
<p>These newer links between football and black music cultures hint at how future generations may tell our contemporary national stories and find both celebration and resistance in the sounds of our times. While some on the football terraces are audibly polarised, it is the confidently assertive multicultural footballers and music artists, leading hopes on the pitch or soundtracking our lives beyond the stadium, who allow us to collectively experience the anxieties and dreams that echo around the beautiful game.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/168445/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
From celebratory calypsos to more critical reggae tracks, Black British music has had a huge influence on the evolving sound of football.
John Doyle, Senior Lecturer in Digital and Multimedia Journalism, University of Sussex
Daniel Burdsey, Associate Dean (Research and Knowledge Exchange), University of Brighton
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/156904
2021-03-18T13:40:27Z
2021-03-18T13:40:27Z
How Bunny Wailer brought innovation and Rastology to the Jamaican music renaissance
<p>The <a href="https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/bunny-wailer-obit-1035643/">recent death of Bunny Wailer</a>, the last surviving founding member of the Wailers has seen outpourings of grief and appreciation all over the world. But in the wake of the <a href="https://www.grammy.com/grammys/artists/bunny-wailer/14242">triple Grammy award-winner’s</a> passing at 73, the pioneer’s contributions to reggae are being revisited by those who understand the full scope of his impact on reggae – and many more genres besides.</p>
<p>I met Bunny during the Wailers’ 1973 UK tour in Manchester, when members included Bob Marley, Peter Tosh and Bunny himself. My student band wanted to replicate the reggae sound we heard in songs like <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mB8EwEeOZ9U">Stir it Up</a>, when Bunny and Peter sang harmonious backing vocals for Bob. </p>
<p>Bunny was deep and considered when talking about his music, checking to see if we understood the central messages of resistance, Rastafarianism and black liberation. The Wailers were about to change the face of popular music then. But to grasp how they shaped their iconic sound, you should understand the surroundings that moulded them as musicians.</p>
<h2>The birth of the Wailers</h2>
<p>Bunny was born Neville O’Riley Livingston in <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/music/2021/mar/04/bunny-wailer-obituary">Kingston, Jamaica, on April 10 1947</a>. He moved to the district of Nine Mile, a rural region in the St Ann parish of Jamaica, as a child. It was there that he met Bob years before either of them made their stamp on the world. </p>
<p>St Ann’s strong history of producing other luminaries, such as <a href="https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/1923-marcus-garvey-last-word-incarceration/">pan African leader</a> <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Marcus-Garvey">Marcus Garvey</a>, would’ve provided fertile ground for Bunny’s budding interest in black power and independence politics. Moving from the tranquil, “easy-living” countryside of Nine Mile to the harshness of downtown Kingston would’ve had a similar effect on Bunny’s views and music, strengthening those interests into something more concrete through the city’s proliferation of sound systems and recording studios. </p>
<p>By 1957, Bunny and Bob began to learn their craft through <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/news/1999/dec/21/guardianobituaries">Joe Higgs</a>, an influential musician and producer who worked with famous sound system innovator and record producer <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-56256885">Coxsone Dodd</a>. While developing, mentoring and recording new music talent in the 1960s, Higgs introduced the pair to Peter Tosh, who became the third original Wailers’ member.</p>
<h2>Jamaica’s music renaissance</h2>
<p>The <a href="http://osmiumcollection.blogspot.com/2014/06/the-wailers-bob-marley-peter-tosh-and.html">three teenagers</a> were stimulated by the fast-paced 1960s Kingston music scene, where enterprising musicians and budding entrepreneurs developed new styles like ska, rocksteady, roots reggae and dub, setting trends that became popular and eventually influenced global music. Suddenly, after years of relative obscurity, Jamaican musicians, producers and songwriters had opportunities to promote and distribute their records into the UK and then around the world. </p>
<p>This mindset of innovation was the backbone of Jamaican sound systems. As well as the wider Jamaican music industry, the Kingston scene also shaped the early Wailers’ ska sound. By 1964, Bob, Bunny and Peter had their first number one hit in Jamaica, “Simmer Down”, a message to gangs in Kingston to “cool down” crime and political-related violence.</p>
<p>By the time the Barrett brothers joined the band to play drum and bass, the Wailers’ sound had evolved from ska to an intoxicating mix of political lyricism, strong rhythms, rock guitar riffs and synthesisers. This formed the basis of roots reggae (as heard on the Wailers’ fifth album, Catch a Fire).</p>
<p><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17266345-rastafari">Rastology</a> (a term used by scholars and Rastas to represent Rastafarian philosophy, spirituality, lifestyle and cultural practices) has remained a constant throughout the genre. As reggae and its sub-genres like dub and dancehall have evolved, Rastology has been appropriated and expressed through what I term “sonic livity”. </p>
<p>In Rastology, “livity” denotes the <a href="https://oxford.universitypressscholarship.com/view/10.1093/0195133765.001.0001/acprof-9780195133769-chapter-5">Rastafarian way of living</a> and being. It’s the consciousness that flows from the belief, experience and expression of Jah (God) in oneself. This is often voiced in Rasta vernacular as “I and I”. The first “I” describes Jah (God) connecting to the second “I”, the individual. </p>
<p>The “I and I” relationship is believed to be intensified through sonics (sound frequency vibrations). Whether expressed through <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/rastafari/subdivisions/nyahbinghi.shtml">Nyabinghi drumming</a>, worship, singing, rhythms, dub or sound systems, sonic livity aims to be upful (positive) and intentional music created to promote “one love” in humanity.</p>
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<p>When Bunny left the Wailers in 1973 following a <a href="https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/bunny-wailer-obit-1035643/">creative clash of ideas</a> with the group, he grounded himself even further in these concepts, rooting himself in Jamaica, where he continued to live his semi-rural Rastafarian lifestyle. His first album, Blackheart Man (1976), shows the extent of that influence, with songs like <a href="https://youtu.be/XYPEsP05VJc">Fighting Against Conviction (Battering Down Sentence)</a> reinforcing his ideas and experiences about Rastafarianism, black identity and politics.</p>
<p>Bunny’s peers (<a href="https://www.voice-online.co.uk/entertainment/music/2021/03/03/bunny-wailer-passing-of-a-legend/">some of whom also died recently</a>) were also integral to Jamaica’s musical renaissance following the country’s 1962 independence from the UK. The likes of Desmond Dekker, Alton Ellis, Marcia Griffiths, Toots and the Maytals, U Roy, Lee “Scratch” Perry, Milly Small and others created catalogues of musical hits that anchored Jamaica’s place in global pop culture. Through the work of musicians like these, reggae has been recognised by UNESCO as an <a href="https://ich.unesco.org/en/RL/reggae-music-of-jamaica-01398">“intangible cultural heritage of humanity”</a> worthy of protection and preservation.</p>
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<p>In the past decade, a new generation of young Jamaican musicians like Protoje, Jah9, Chronixx, Jessie Royal, Koffee, Kelissa and Kabaka Pyramid have emerged, inspired by roots reggae musicians like Bunny Wailer. There’s a resurgence of “conscious reggae” – reggae music with life-affirming, positive and political lyrics. </p>
<p>With lines like “Africa inna we soul but a Jah inna we heart”, Protoje’s hit song <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hzqFmXZ8tOE">Who Knows</a> is a perfect example. Songs like <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fUREgj4i684">“I Can”</a> by Chronixx and “In The Midst” by Jah9 also echo sentiments of Jah, love, self-development and liberation, all of which appeared throughout Bunny’s discography.</p>
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<p>By embracing social and new technology <a href="https://www.vogue.com/projects/13362670/reggae-revival-jamaica-chronixx-protoje-roots-music%22%22">emerging reggae artists</a> are pushing the boundaries of the genre, reaching wider audiences and continuing in the tradition of spreading spirituality and positivity through song. With few of the pioneers of the genres that inspired this new cohort left, it seems their messages about resistance, equality, black power, and social justice have endured.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/156904/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Les Johnson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
The last original Wailer may have died, but the musician’s lasting influence on music is clear
Les Johnson, Visiting Research Fellow, Birmingham School of Media, Birmingham City University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/151068
2020-11-30T15:04:41Z
2020-11-30T15:04:41Z
Small Axe: what Steve McQueen got right and wrong about lovers rock
<p>Usually, I’m the first to fall asleep in front of the TV during a popular Sunday evening drama. But I stayed wide awake during the second instalment of Steve McQueen’s <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p08vxt33">Small Axe</a> series, <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000prjp/small-axe-series-1-lovers-rock">Lovers Rock</a>. The series presents five insights into the lives of young Caribbean communities in London and this episode explored lovers rock reggae music, which was a distinctive genre of romantic love songs that came out of London during the mid-1970s. </p>
<p>These tender romantic songs merged roots reggae baselines from Jamaica, the soulful melodies of Chicago and Philadelphia soul with a touch of British pop to form the lovers rock vibe. It was an early expression of a definitive Black UK sound. </p>
<p>McQueen’s film documents the underground space of the reggae Blues party, a Caribbean cultural institution that arguably transformed the way popular music is played and experienced here in the UK. It’s a subject that <a href="https://www.dora.dmu.ac.uk/handle/2086/20139">I have been studying</a> for a while now and since the episode’s release, I’ve been party to many debates about the merits and authenticity of McQueen’s interpretation of this important marker of Black British music and culture.</p>
<h2>Setting up the Blues party</h2>
<p>In Birmingham, where I’m from, Blues parties took place in people’s homes, community halls, leisure centres, Black-owned music and cultural venues as well as Irish pubs. During the 1970s and 80s, state authorities viewed the Blues party as a social menace that epitomised criminal activity and hedonistic disorder. However, for Blues party aficionados, these spaces were a vital sanctuary of communal pleasure and enjoyment, a self-created and self-defined space away from the everyday forms of racism that were commonplace in Thatcher’s Britain. </p>
<p>The film is attentive to some of the various elements needed to hold a blues party in your “yard”. The huge pots of rice and peas and curry goat. The removal of the carpet and furniture from your living room, as if you were moving house. The wiring up of the epic speaker boxes to balance the treble and the heavy baselines of the sound system. The eagerness to show off the latest style and fashion as you step into the party in shiny sateen dresses or your Gabicci shirt. These were all essential features in the film that captured the cultural tones and stylistic tenor of this period. These details are important because it’s very rare for them to be given such attention on British TV screens.</p>
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<p>However, because such representations are so rare, this attention to detail is also the film’s weakness. The “dub” scene, where we see a young Rastafari bredrin falling to the ground in a frenzied spiritual trance, missed the significance of dub as a deeply educational form of communication. The Blues party was an erotic space as much as it was a space of thinking and learning from the wit, skill and lyrical dexterity of the DJ that chatted freestyle lyrics and verses over the mic. </p>
<p>In some ways, the DJ was a precursor to <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/dec/23/ten-years-black-twitter-watchdog">Black Twitter</a> (an online subculture largely consisting of Black users focused on issues of interest to the Black community), offering detailed and critical social commentary but with a distinctive anti-colonial critique to “<a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-law-and-religion/article/chant-down-babylon-freedom-of-religion-and-the-rastafarian-challenge-to-majoritarianism/0B9EBEE39F9310026808EB3A7E2981E8">chant down Babylon</a>”. An idea originating from the religious and political movement of Rastafarianism, Babylon is the society constructed by colonialism that oppresses Black people. So to “chant down Babylon” is to speak out against this society and its ills. </p>
<h2>A Lovers Rock revival</h2>
<p>The promotion of McQueen’s film hinged heavily on Janet Kay’s lovers rock classic, Silly Games and the iconic high-pitched note that soars and climbs during the chorus of the song. There’s no doubting the cultural significance of Kay’s track. Lovers rock enjoyed popular mainstream chart success during the 1970s when Kay performed Silly Games on Top of the Pops in 1979, reaching <a href="https://www.officialcharts.com/search/singles/silly-games/">number two in the UK Top 40 chart</a>. </p>
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<p>But as joyful and compelling as the track is, at one point in the film the song is extensively featured for over 11 minutes at the expense of a plethora of other classic lovers rock tracks of the period. Now, any sound system worth their salt and anyone who has ever attended a Blues party knows that this would never have happened. <a href="https://www.vice.com/en/article/zng9y8/british-sound-system-culture-092">Sound system culture</a> is about the selector’s ability to “rinse tune”, meaning a sound system’s credibility rests on demonstrating the unique depth and range of their music back catalogue. This means that no one song would have been playing for as long as 11 minutes. </p>
<p>For those who may be new to the sound system scene, these details may not matter at all. But for the folks who do remember, they mark the line between flashes of genuine insight and moments of contrived nostalgia.</p>
<p>If there is going to be a revival of the genre, as <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/music/2020/nov/23/could-steve-mcqueen-small-axe-spark-a-lovers-rock-revival">some suggest</a>, then those interested should explore the depth and range of the lovers rock back catalogue. The early popular voices of lovers rock in the UK were characterised by young Black teenage girls, such as Kay, Louisa Mark and <a href="https://open.spotify.com/track/45bAqGHKTrSgvvSQZ9Wdm0?si=beUSmYgNQVmzCBhdJn4hLw">Carroll Thompson</a> to name a few. <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/music/2009/nov/04/louisa-mark-obituary">Mark</a> is the vocalist that marked the birth of the UK lovers rock sound with her cover of the Robert Parker track, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aDMkVCQ5-D4&ab_channel=clanccy">Caught You in a Lie</a>. </p>
<p>Popular UK male acts included <a href="https://www.mixcloud.com/tetsuyasakai161/maxi-priest-lovers-selection/">Maxi Priest</a>, <a href="https://open.spotify.com/artist/1vxQLTnflwsfzaQtSOprp0?si=_zqHZTFPSaSOjP846Ju-ig">Vivian Jones</a> and <a href="https://open.spotify.com/artist/0lm1sBmkf4KjNJorgwZ4P8?si=FtNd22kGR6uD06k3JbDKpQ">Peter Hunnigale</a>. UK band Beshara’s track, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1bveBCRtVtE">Men Cry Too</a> expressed masculine tenderness and vulnerabilities. Artists from Jamaica such as <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9M7yhGo1yvU&ab_channel=BionicDub">Sugar Minott</a> and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=smPOge8AErY">Dennis Brown</a> both collaborated with UK lovers rock artists and where hugely influential in their own right, as too was Gregory Issacs.</p>
<p>Clearly, McQueen’s film cannot do the work of telling the full story of lovers rock and nor should we expect it to but it is an important moment in Black British culture that is well worth a revival.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/151068/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Lisa Palmer does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Centred around a Blues Party in London, the second film from the Small Axe anthology captured the excitement of setting up a party but missed things about sound system culture in the UK.
Lisa Palmer, Deputy Director of The Stephen Lawrence Research Centre, De Montfort University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/128333
2019-12-13T06:47:15Z
2019-12-13T06:47:15Z
Politics and fashion: the rise of the red beret
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/305224/original/file-20191204-70155-1ub9nk9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Ugandan opposition politician Bobi Wine takes a selfie with Zimbabwe's opposition leader Nelson Chamisa </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Aaron Ufumeli/EPA-EFE</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><a href="https://theconversation.com/uganda-who-is-bobi-wine-and-why-is-he-creating-such-a-fuss-102138">Bobi Wine</a> has come a long way in two years. The self-styled “<a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-africa-49204562/bobi-wine-on-the-road-with-uganda-s-ghetto-president">Ghetto President</a>” of Uganda used to be a music star, playing politically charged reggae beats to packed houses. In 2017, the politics took over. </p>
<p>Donning a red beret, he formed the <a href="https://twitter.com/people_power_ug?lang=en">People Power movement</a>, running a successful grassroots campaign to be elected as a parliamentary representative. Now, he’s challenging <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2013/01/02/world/africa/yoweri-museveni---fast-facts/index.html">Yoweri Museveni</a> for the presidency in 2021.</p>
<p>In two years, Wine’s red beret has become synonymous with a fiery spirit of Ugandan resistance, long since thought to be extinguished after 33 years of <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-museveni-has-twisted-ugandas-constitution-to-cling-to-power-118933">ironclad rule</a> by Museveni.</p>
<p>In the beret, Wine cannily put the “brand” in “firebrand” across his multiple social media platforms. In response, the regime is turning to unconventional <a href="https://africanarguments.org/2019/10/31/uganda-museveni-big-bobi-wine-problem/">suppression tactics</a>. On September 18, 2019, a <a href="https://www.scribd.com/document/428052967/Updf-Insignia-and-Uniforms-in-Uganda-Gazette#download&from_embed">government gazette</a> listed the red beret as official military attire, effectively <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/09/uganda-bans-red-beret-bobi-wine-signature-headgear-190930150137387.html">banning it</a> from public life.</p>
<h2>Symbolism</h2>
<p>Perhaps fittingly for a time of stark global inequality, red headgear is currently marking global populist movements of all political persuasions. The French Revolution brought us the “<a href="https://www.thoughtco.com/phrygian-cap-bonnet-rouge-1221893">bonnet rouge</a>” and red is historically synonymous with <a href="https://theconversation.com/red-state-blue-state-how-colors-took-sides-in-politics-93541">leftist politics</a>. But <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/13/fashion/trumps-campaign-hat-becomes-an-ironic-summer-accessory.html">red baseball caps</a> famously heralded the 2016 US election of Trump in a rustbelt resurgence.</p>
<p>South Africa has its own version of working-class red: the <a href="https://twitter.com/EFFSouthAfrica?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor">Economic Freedom Fighters</a>. The opposition party’s trademark red beret forms part of a trio of headgear including the wrap and hard hat. Within weeks of the party debuting their look, sales skyrocketed. Similarly, Make America Great Again hat sales have soared to <a href="https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/washington-secrets/1-million-make-america-great-again-hats-sold">one million</a> in 2019. </p>
<p>A beret may not make a worker’s revolutionary, but it certainly makes a statement. Its history is equal part bohemian artist and militant revolutionary; it’s been worn by everyone from Rembrandt to Robert Mugabe, the Beatniks to the Black Panther movement.</p>
<p>Fittingly, Wine styles himself as both artist and activist, his career as a musician merging seamlessly into his political manifesto. “When we sing ‘Tulivimba mu Uganda empya’ (We shall move with swag in a new Uganda), we summarise what our struggle is about - DIGNITY,” <a href="https://twitter.com/HEBobiwine/status/1191024480417701888">proclaimed Wine</a> in a tweet.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/305221/original/file-20191204-70149-1of3rec.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/305221/original/file-20191204-70149-1of3rec.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/305221/original/file-20191204-70149-1of3rec.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/305221/original/file-20191204-70149-1of3rec.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/305221/original/file-20191204-70149-1of3rec.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/305221/original/file-20191204-70149-1of3rec.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=505&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/305221/original/file-20191204-70149-1of3rec.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=505&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/305221/original/file-20191204-70149-1of3rec.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=505&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">An EFF supporter carries a painting of party leader Julius Malema during an election rally.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">STR/EPA-EFE</span></span>
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<h2>Social media</h2>
<p>Indeed, Wine’s social media presence is key to his success, spreading message and image interchangeably. Using his prolific <a href="https://twitter.com/HEBobiwine">Twitter</a>, <a href="https://www.facebook.com/www.bobiwine.ug/">Facebook </a> and <a href="https://www.instagram.com/bobiwine/?hl=en">Instagram</a> presence, he is relentlessly visual: nearly every update is accompanied by an image of beret-clad supporters. His near daily updates centre less on local rallies than on his <a href="https://time.com/collection/time-100-next-2019/5718843/bobi-wine/">increasingly high profile</a>, Western travel and media coverage. It’s a canny move in a country where 78% of the population is under 35.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/305417/original/file-20191205-39023-cow7ho.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/305417/original/file-20191205-39023-cow7ho.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/305417/original/file-20191205-39023-cow7ho.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/305417/original/file-20191205-39023-cow7ho.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/305417/original/file-20191205-39023-cow7ho.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/305417/original/file-20191205-39023-cow7ho.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/305417/original/file-20191205-39023-cow7ho.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/305417/original/file-20191205-39023-cow7ho.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Bobi Wine and his red beret made it onto the Next 100 list.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Time magazine</span></span>
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<p>The Ugandan regime is nothing if not wise to this: on July 1, 2018, the government instigated what was dubbed a <a href="https://www.wired.com/story/uganda-social-media-tax-stays-for-now/">“social media tax”</a>, charging Ugandans 200 shillings (roughly five US cents) a day to use a bouquet of 60 internet applications, including WhatsApp, Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. While the price may not seem prohibitive, it still presents a big structural barrier in a country where 41.7% of people were living on <a href="https://databank.worldbank.org/views/reports/reportwidget.aspx?Report_Name=CountryProfile&Id=b450fd57&tbar=y&dd=y&inf=n&zm=n&country=UGA">less than $2 a day</a> in 2018.</p>
<p>“Social media use is definitely a luxury item,” announced Museveni, ironically on his <a href="https://www.yowerikmuseveni.com/blog/museveni/president-responds-feed-back-earlier-statement-new-social-media-and-mobile-money-taxes">personal blog</a>. He continued: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Internet use can sometimes be used for education purposes and research. This should not be taxed. However, using internet to access social media for chatting, recreation, malice, subversion, inciting murder, is definitely a luxury.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The social media tax has added a new twist to Museveni’s suppression tactics. While virtual private networks allow more savvy Ugandan users a way around the problem, others take the hit and pay the price.</p>
<h2>Familiar tactics</h2>
<p>Wine’s tactical use of music and fashion follows Museveni’s own playbook. The Ugandan president released his own popular song in November 2010. </p>
<p>Unlike Wine’s populist reggae, Museveni’s <a href="https://youtu.be/MOHcnrrG1YU">“U Want Another Rap”</a> is mostly sung in Runyankore, a language predominantly spoken in rural areas of the country. Its heavy-handed lyrics emphasise individual resilience, like “harvesters … gave me millet, that I gave to a hen, which gave me an egg, that I gave to children, who gave me a monkey, that I gave to the king, who gave me a cow, that I used to marry my wife.”</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/305427/original/file-20191205-39001-k8f6py.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/305427/original/file-20191205-39001-k8f6py.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/305427/original/file-20191205-39001-k8f6py.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=389&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/305427/original/file-20191205-39001-k8f6py.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=389&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/305427/original/file-20191205-39001-k8f6py.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=389&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/305427/original/file-20191205-39001-k8f6py.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=488&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/305427/original/file-20191205-39001-k8f6py.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=488&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/305427/original/file-20191205-39001-k8f6py.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=488&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Museveni wears trademark wide-brimmed hat.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Mike Hutchins/EPA-EFE</span></span>
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</figure>
<p>In line with this folksy approach, Museveni famously favours a wide-brimmed conservative sunhat with leather string. Like Wine’s, the hat is a feature of most leadership portraits. The contrast couldn’t be starker: an old man with a broad-brimmed gardening hat and his young, hip rival in revolutionary red branded beret. </p>
<h2>Practicality</h2>
<p>Against the backdrop of a Ugandan dictatorship that controls media narrative, then, viable opposition needs a boost. Wine’s choice of symbol fits well. Berets are convenient: cheap to produce and impossible to ignore. The splash of red next to the face makes its way into every photograph. Unlike a T-shirt, headgear is easily stashed or discarded during confrontation without immediately signalling a clothing item has been removed.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.rosiefindlay.com/">Dr Rosie Findlay</a>, digital fashion media specialist and author of <a href="https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/lsereviewofbooks/2018/02/15/book-review-personal-style-blogs-appearances-that-fascinate-by-rosie-findlay/">Personal Style Blogs: Appearances that Fascinate</a>, says the fact that the beret is being deployed on social media should not be overlooked. </p>
<blockquote>
<p>The colour pops on the small screen and is immediately recognisable, a literal fashion statement in how its symbolism immediately marks Wine’s image with his politics.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>In the face of the banning of the red beret by Museveni, Wine seems <a href="https://af.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idAFKBN1WF1YV?feedType=RSS&feedName=worldNews">unfazed</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>He thinks it is about the beret - it’s not. This is a symbolisation of the desire for change. People Power is more than a red beret, we are bigger than our symbol.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>With 18 months before the next Ugandan election and two hats in the ring, let us see if revolutionary spectacle can translate into substantial governance.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/305428/original/file-20191205-38997-196sc6h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/305428/original/file-20191205-38997-196sc6h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/305428/original/file-20191205-38997-196sc6h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/305428/original/file-20191205-38997-196sc6h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/305428/original/file-20191205-38997-196sc6h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/305428/original/file-20191205-38997-196sc6h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/305428/original/file-20191205-38997-196sc6h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/305428/original/file-20191205-38997-196sc6h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">US President Donald Trump holds his famous red cap, a symbol of the rising right.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Michael Reynolds/EPA-EFE</span></span>
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</figure><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/128333/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Carla Lever does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Bobi Wine in Uganda does it; so do the Economic Freedom Fighters in South Africa. The red beret is worn to signify the revolutionary. Its power lies in a symbolism that combines art and politics.
Carla Lever, Research Fellow at the Nelson Mandela School of Public Governance, University of Cape Town
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/108114
2018-12-03T15:59:55Z
2018-12-03T15:59:55Z
Why UNESCO was right to add reggae to its cultural heritage list
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/248478/original/file-20181203-194932-sk71m9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Paul Weinberg</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>When UNESCO announced that “the reggae music of Jamaica” had been <a href="https://ich.unesco.org/en/RL/reggae-music-of-jamaica-01398">added to its list</a> of cultural products considered worthy of recognition, it was a reflection on the fact that reggae, which grew from its roots in the backstreets and dance halls of Jamaica, is more than just popular music, but an important social and political phenomenon.</p>
<p>Jamaica’s application to the committee mentioned a number of artists from <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/music/features/move-over-bob-marley-peter-tosh-is-finally-getting-the-recognition-he-deserves-8914028.html">Bob Marley and Peter Tosh</a> to <a href="https://rootfire.net/chronixx/">Chronixx and the Zinc Fence Band</a>. Some observers may be wondering whether such musicians are a good enough reason to include reggae on this prestigious list. What those readers don’t fully understand is that reggae is far more significant than its musicians. Not only is social commentary “an integral part of the music”, the application argued, but reggae has also made a significant “contribution to international discourse concerning issues of injustice, resistance, love, and humanity”. </p>
<p>Reggae has “provided a voice for maligned groups, the unemployed and at risk groups and provided a vehicle for social commentary and expression where no other outlet existed or was afforded”. It has also “provided a means of praising and communicating with God”. Not only are these big claims, but they are all true.</p>
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<h2>Deep roots</h2>
<p>Culturally, politically, religiously and musically, reggae has done much heavy lifting. Born in the back streets of Kingston in the 1950s, it is proudly Jamaican. Raised in difficult circumstances, it has matured into a friendly and generous music that travels well and warmly embraces the other cultures and music it meets. Hybridisation is part of reggae’s genetic makeup. Its DNA can be traced back to West Africa and out into the world of popular music. It came into being through mento (a form of Jamaican folk music), ska and rock steady, absorbing influences from the Caribbean (especially calypso), rhythm and blues, rock, and jazz.</p>
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<p>However, not only has reggae embraced other musical styles and ideas, but in so doing, it has influenced them and given birth to new sub-genres. Particularly significant in this respect has been the innovative recording techniques developed by Jamaican producers such as <a href="https://www.factmag.com/2015/05/19/king-tubby-beginners-guide-dub-reggae/">King Tubby</a>, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/music/lee-scratch-perry">Lee “Scratch” Perry</a>, and <a href="https://www.trojanrecords.com/artist/bunny-lee/">Bunny Lee</a>. What became known as “<a href="https://www.factmag.com/2014/04/16/dubbing-is-a-must-a-beginners-guide-to-jamaicas-most-influential-genre/">dub reggae</a>” has inspired generations of artists and producers around the world and is still an important influence in popular music.</p>
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<h2>Politics of resistance</h2>
<p>As well as its musical contribution, reggae hasn’t forgotten its roots. Not only does it comment on current political events and social problems, but it also provides a multi-layered introduction to the history, religion and culture of what music historian Paul Gilroy called “<a href="https://sites.duke.edu/blackatlantic/sample-page/exploring-the-black-atlantic-through-sound/">the Black Atlantic</a>”. While some reggae cannot, of course, be considered religious or political – “<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/music/2011/sep/22/lovers-rock-story-reggae">lovers rock</a>” for example, focuses on romantic relationships – much of it is.</p>
<p>A key moment in Jamaican political history (as well as the story of reggae) happened on April 22 1978 at the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/music/2011/jun/16/bob-marley-peace-concert">One Love Concert</a> hosted by Bob Marley at The National Stadium in Kingston. Marley famously called bitter political rivals Michael Manley and Edward Seaga to the stage and persuaded them to join hands. Few other people could have done this. Although the concert did not bring an end to the turmoil in Jamaica, it did showcase the significance of reggae as a political and cultural force.</p>
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<h2>Rastafari</h2>
<p>It is of particular significance that reggae is inextricably related to the religion of Rastafari, which emerged as a direct response to oppression within Jamaican colonial society. Often articulating the ideas of Jamaican political activist <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/garvey_marcus.shtml">Marcus Garvey</a>, who is understood by Rastafarians to be a prophet, Rasta musicians such as Marley and Burning Spear developed roots reggae as a vehicle for their religio-political messages. </p>
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<p>Even if some musicians are not committed Rastafarians, they typically identify with the movement’s ideas and culture. In particular, many wear dreadlocks, consider smoking “the herb” (cannabis) to be a sacrament, and reference the religio-political dualism of <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/rastafari/">Zion and Babylon</a> (the social systems of the righteous and the unrighteous). There is a hope often articulated within reggae of a better world following Armageddon and the fall of Babylon. “Babylon your throne gone down”, declared Marley in his 1973 song, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jBBTitBMEMA">Rasta Man Chant</a>. These biblical ideas are also creatively applied to a range of political issues, from local injustices to climate change and the nuclear arms race.</p>
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<p>Sometimes reggae itself is understood to be a form of direct action, in that musicians are understood to “chant down Babylon”. As Ziggy Marley put it:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Babylon [is] a devil system … who cause so much problems on the face of the Earth … And by ‘chanting down’ I mean by putting positive messages out there. That is the way we’ll fight a negative with a positive.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Examples of this include Yabby You’s Chant Down Babylon Kingdom and of course, Marley’s own Chant Down Babylon. This type of thinking is rooted in Jamaican history. Following violent confrontations with the police during the 1940s and 1950s, Rasta elders – particularly <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/news/2006/mar/23/guardianobituaries.religion">Mortimer Planno</a> – appealed to Jamaican academics to study Rastafari in order to increase popular understanding and tolerance. And in 1960, three scholars (M.G. Smith, Roy Augier and Rex Nettleford) published their <a href="https://openlibrary.org/books/OL13865081M/Report_on_the_Rastafari_movement_in_Kingston_Jamaica">Report on the Rastafarian Movement in Kingston, Jamaica</a>. </p>
<p>For Rastas, the destruction of Babylon came to be interpreted less in terms of a violent overthrow of oppressive social structures and more in terms of a conversion to new ways of thinking, central to which was the strategic primacy assumed by the arts. Reggae emerged as part of this process. From the outset, therefore, it was understood by many to be far more than simply “pop music”. It was “rebel music”, a powerful political tool for the peaceful resistance of oppression.</p>
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<h2>Reggae international</h2>
<p>The potency of reggae as an educational and inspirational force became conspicuous shortly after its arrival in Britain. In 1976 it was central to the founding of the <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/music/features/rock-against-racism-remembering-that-gig-that-started-it-all-815054.html">Rock Against Racism campaign</a> and by the late 1970s, reggae, dub, ska, and the terminology of Rastafari were informing punk culture as part of an emerging “dread culture of resistance”. </p>
<p>For example, in 1979, the same year that witnessed the Southall race riots, during which a teacher, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2010/apr/27/blair-peach-killed-police-met-report">Blair Peach</a>, was killed, the British punk band <a href="https://www.forcedexposure.com/Artists/RUTS.DC.html">The Ruts</a> released their dub reggae influenced single Jah War, on which they sang, “the air was thick with the smell of oppression”. </p>
<p>The Ruts subsequently achieved chart success with Babylon’s Burning. While some may have been bemused by the reference, for their fans – for whom <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/music/2007/jul/20/urban.popandrock">punk and reggae</a> were first cousins at the very least – the message was obvious: Babylon was the principally white political establishment, which oppressed ethnic minorities and the unemployed poor of the inner cities, and which would eventually be dismantled. </p>
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<p>At the same time, Jamaicans who had moved to Britain in their childhood, such as <a href="http://www.lintonkwesijohnson.com/linton-kwesi-johnson/">Linton Kwesi Johnson</a>, used a creative blend of poetry and reggae to comment on the injustices they faced: “Inglan is a bitch, dere’s no escapin it.” One of Johnson’s poems commented specifically on the murder of Peach, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SHrlmwudYuA">Reggae Fi Peach</a>. Since then, reggae music has continued to “speak truth to power” – from <a href="https://www.caribbeannationalweekly.com/entertainment/queen-ifrica-releases-powerful-song-hitting-back-domestic-violence/">challenging domestic abuse</a> to protesting against <a href="https://jamaicans.com/reggae-songs-nelson-mandela/">apartheid in South Africa</a>. </p>
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<p>For these political, religious and cultural reasons – as much as for the music itself – UNESCO was right to finally give reggae the recognition it deserves.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/108114/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Christopher Partridge does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
More than just a musical accolade, UNESCO has recognised the social and political importance of Jamaican music.
Christopher Partridge, Professor of Religious Studies, Lancaster University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/88733
2017-12-11T15:15:08Z
2017-12-11T15:15:08Z
‘Ghost Town’: a haunting 1981 protest song that still makes sense today
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/198036/original/file-20171206-31555-wk7xa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The cover of "Ghost town".</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Pop Sike</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>England, 1981. In some rural South West discos menace was in the air; no night complete without a fight, <a href="http://mashable.com/2016/03/29/british-skinheads/#lq96___3LgqA">Skinheads</a> attacking whoever riled them, flick knives at the ready. Tracks by <a href="https://www.allmusic.com/artist/madness-mn0000195874">Madness</a>, <a href="https://www.allmusic.com/artist/the-english-beat-mn0000197921">The Beat</a> and <a href="https://www.allmusic.com/artist/the-selecter-mn0000504276">The Selecter</a> were the soundtrack to these nights. These bands played <a href="http://jamaicansmusic.com/learn/origins/ska">ska music</a>, a popular Jamaican genre from which reggae evolved.</p>
<p>But when <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-13780074">“Ghost Town”</a> by <a href="http://www.thespecials.com/">The Specials</a> came on, everyone stopped. </p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">“Ghost Town” by The Specials.</span></figcaption>
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<p>Formed in 1977 and arguably the most influential band of the UK’s <a href="https://rateyourmusic.com/genre/2+Tone/">2 Tone Ska</a> scene, “Ghost Town”, a skewed ska oddity, was written by Jerry Dammers, The Specials’ keyboardist and released in June 1981. It was their last song before splitting up and reforming as The Special AKA and stayed at the top of the UK charts for three weeks.</p>
<h2>Odd, eerie song</h2>
<p>It’s an odd, eerie song, nodding to pop convention and sitting wilfully outside of it. It’s included, in passing, in Dorian Lynskey’s beautifully written book on protest songs, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2011/mar/20/33-revolutions-minute-protest-songs">“33 Revolutions Per Minute”</a>, but unlike the band’s “Free Nelson Mandela” does not merit its own chapter.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">“Free Nelson Mandela” by The Special AKA.</span></figcaption>
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<p>Perhaps because “Ghost Town” cannot be “placed”. It’s not explicitly against any one event. It does not exhort its listeners into any one particular political view. It is not part of any one social movement for change. It is, rather, a stealth protest song. </p>
<p>Starting with a Hammond organ’s six ascending notes before a mournful flute solo, it paints a bleak aural and lyrical landscape. Written in E♭, more attuned to “mood music”, with nods to cinematic soundtracks and music hall tradition, it reflects and engenders anxiety. </p>
<p>The whispered chorus of “This Town/ is coming like a Ghost town” is then heard, followed by front man Terry Hall’s deadpan vocals lamenting how “all the clubs have been closed down” because there is “too much fighting on the dance floor”.</p>
<p>One of the clubs referred to in the song was <a href="http://www.coventrytelegraph.net/lifestyle/nostalgia/gallery/locarno-ballroom-10657835">The Locarno</a> in Coventry, the Midlands UK city where the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/music/2009/mar/30/2tone-label-specials-madness">2 Tone record label</a> started in the late 1970s. </p>
<p>2 Tone had emerged stylistically from the <a href="https://therake.com/stories/style/street-smarts-mods-rudeboys-teddy-boys-punks/">Mod and Punk subcultures</a> and its musical roots and the people in it, audiences and bands, were both black and white. Ska and the related Jamaican <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00ym9n4">Rocksteady</a> were its musical foundations, sharpened further by punk attitude and anger. It was this anger that Dammers articulated in “Ghost Town”, galvanised both what he had seen on tour around the UK in 1981 and what was happening in the band, which was riven by internal tensions. </p>
<p>England was hit by recession and away from rural Skinhead nights, <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-16313781">riots</a> were breaking out across its urban areas. Deprived, forgotten, run down and angry, these were places where young people, black and white, erupted. In these neglected parts of London, Birmingham, Leeds and Liverpool the young, the unemployed, and the disaffected fought pitch battles with the police. </p>
<p>“Ghost Town” was the mournful sound of these riots, a poetic protest. It articulates anger at a state structure, an economic system and an entrenched animosity towards the young, black, white and poor. It asks,</p>
<blockquote>
<p>why must the youth fight against themselves. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>In his book Lynskey argues that “like all great records about social collapse, it seems to both fear and relish calamity” and its ambiguity allows it to soundtrack more than the riots about which it was written. It is an angry elegy for lost opportunity, lost youth, an acid flavoured lament for what was and what could be. </p>
<p>The streets that The Specials conjure up in “Ghost Town” are inhabited by ghosts; dancing is a memory, silence reigns. The sounds of life, community, creativity are no longer, “bands don’t play no more”. In the song’s short bridge section in the bright key of G♭ major, Hall asks us to,</p>
<blockquote>
<p>remember the good old days/before the ghost town/ when we danced and sang/ and the music played ina de boom town". </p>
</blockquote>
<p>And as Charles Dickens wrote in his <a href="http://example.com/">“A Christmas Carol”</a>, ghosts are spectres not only of the past, but of the present and future too, traces of what was, is and might have been. “Ghost Town” is the haunting track of thousands of lost futures. And in 2011, when England <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-14436499">erupted</a> again and the cities burnt, “Ghost Town” was <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/music/musicblog/2011/aug/09/specials-ghost-town">remembered and replayed</a>.</p>
<h2>Strange music video</h2>
<p>Its audio-visual manifestation was also strange. The music video was directed by <a href="http://daily.redbullmusicacademy.com/2015/03/barney-bubbles-feature">Barney Bubbles</a> and filmed in the East End of London, Blackwell Tunnel and a before-hours City of London. Opening with upshots of brutalist grey tower blocks to the sound of those Hammond organ chords and flute, it seems as though there is no one in town but The Specials, who are all crowded into a 1962 Vauxhall Cresta, careering through the empty streets and lip syncing. </p>
<p>This in itself constitutes “eerie” if we use cultural critic Mark Fisher’s work, <a href="https://repeaterbooks.com/product/the-weird-and-the-eerie/">“The Weird And The Eerie”</a>, to understand it. He <a href="http://thequietus.com/articles/21524-mark-fisher-weird-eerie-kubrick-tarkovsky-nolan-review">wrote</a> how,</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The sensation of the eerie occurs either when there is something present where there should be nothing, or there is nothing present when there should be something.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Here, in a major capital city, where the streets should be teeming, there is no-one but The Specials, a group of young black and white men, from a depressed and demoralised Midlands town. They are in charge. </p>
<p>As if to further underline this, the camera was placed on the car bonnet so we see The Specials as if they are crashing into us. And when they all sing “yah, ya ya, ya, yaah, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya…”, they seem like an insane Greek chorus, before Lynval Golding, the band’s rhythm guitarist and vocalist, murmurs the last line “the people getting angry”. The song fades out in dub reggae tradition, inconclusive, echoing. </p>
<h2>Not a dance track</h2>
<p>So what did those fight-ready Skinheads do in those small town discos when “Ghost Town” came on? Not <a href="https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Moonstomp">moonstomping</a>, not smooching. This was not a dance track. It wasn’t the “romantic” one the DJ played at the end of the night. </p>
<p>When “Ghost Town” played, the Skinheads sang along with Terry Hall, smiled manically and screeched. They joined into to the “ghastly chorus” and became, for a few minutes, part of that army of spectres. Because protest sometimes has no words. </p>
<p>It’s just a cry out against injustice, against closed off opportunities by those who have pulled the ladder up and robbed the young, the poor, the white and black of their songs and their dancing, their futures. Drive round an empty city at dawn. Look at the empty flats. </p>
<p>See the streets before the bankers get there and after the cleaning ladies have gone. And put young, poor, disadvantaged people in that car. See how “Ghost Town” makes sense. Now.</p>
<p><em>Protest music has made a serious comeback over the past five years. This article is the first in a series featuring Songs of Protest from across the world, genres and generations.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/88733/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Abigail Gardner does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
A 1981 odd and eerie protest song, ‘Ghost Town’, still resonates today. It remains a cry out against injustice, against closed off opportunities by those who have pulled the ladder up.
Abigail Gardner, Reader in Music and Media, University of Gloucestershire
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/80419
2017-07-04T14:42:20Z
2017-07-04T14:42:20Z
From the margins, reggae in South Africa continues to struggle for human dignity
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/176593/original/file-20170703-7743-13e9e81.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Cape Town reggae artist, Teba Shumba.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Tuomas Järvenpää</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Anthropologist <a href="http://yfile-archive.news.yorku.ca/2005/11/02/carole-yawney-rastafari-scholar-and-social-activist/">Carole Yawney</a> has documented how on the eve of South Africa’s <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/article/south-african-general-elections-1994">first democratic elections</a> in 1994 the African National Congress (ANC) distributed an electoral leaflet in townships with the following <a href="http://ufdcimages.uflib.ufl.edu/CA/00/40/02/06/00001/PDF.pdf">message</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Greetings I'n'I! … The ANC recognises that Rastas are part and parcel of the oppressed masses. We all know of the important role the international Rasta movement has played in the liberation struggle in bringing to the attention of the world the message of our struggle through music.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The ANC was trying to acknowledge and capitalise on the role reggae music and the Rastafarian movement played in the struggle against the apartheid regime. Jamaican reggae was essential in bringing international attention to the South African political struggle.</p>
<p>Jamaican artists addressed their lyrical messages directly to the liberation movements of southern Africa. Some of the most notable examples include <a href="https://genius.com/Peter-tosh-apartheid-lyrics">“Fight Apartheid”</a> (1977) by Peter Tosh, <a href="http://www.songplaces.com/Zimbabwe/Zimbabwe/">“Zimbabwe”</a>(1979) by Bob Marley and Bunny Wailer’s <a href="https://genius.com/Bunny-wailer-botha-the-mosquito-lyrics">“Botha the Mosquito”</a> (1986).</p>
<figure>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Bunny Wailer with his song ‘Botha the Mosquito’, from the album ‘Liberation’.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>As early as the 1970s young people in South Africa’s townships had adopted Rasta beliefs and reggae music as a part of their anti-establishment counterculture. The first wave of <a href="https://www.musicinafrica.net/magazine/reggae-south-africa">homegrown reggae</a> followed quickly. Artists such <a href="https://www.musicinafrica.net/magazine/carlos-djedje-pioneer-african-reggae">Carlos Djedje</a>, <a href="https://www.musicinafrica.net/directory/colbert-mukwevho">Colbert Mukwevho</a> and <a href="https://www.musicinafrica.net/magazine/legends-sa-music-lucky-dube">Lucky Dube</a> managed to defy the state censorship. They launched the genre as one of the most popular music styles in the country in the 1980s and early 1990s.</p>
<p>During the second part of the nineties in democratic South Africa, reggae lost much of its former visibility and commercial potential. This was partly because it was so deeply and specifically connected to the struggle years and the protest against apartheid. </p>
<p>Yet, the Rastafarian counterculture continued to hold relevance in marginalised urban settings. Those are the areas where it had initially been rooted back in the 1970s. In this new post-apartheid era, the protest spirit of reggae turned to voice concerns over the socioeconomic inequalities that continued to escalate throughout the 1990s and 2000s.</p>
<p>Reggae and Rastafari are currently <a href="https://mg.co.za/article/2011-10-14-the-rise-and-of-rastafari">flourishing</a> especially in the Western Cape province and its capital, Cape Town. </p>
<h2>Township reggae circuit</h2>
<p>I first started doing anthropological <a href="http://epublications.uef.fi/pub/urn_isbn_978-952-61-2424-7/index_en.html">research</a> on Capetonian reggae in 2013. I assumed somewhat naively that the township reggae circuit of the city would be relatively closed from outsiders, especially from white foreigners like me. But it soon became apparent that I was actually travelling along a well beaten path during my field research. </p>
<p>Reggae musicians held wide social connections to foreign artists, producers and managers across the city as well as across the world. Many were using online platforms to collaborate with individuals, some of whom they had never met.</p>
<p>This shouldn’t have come as a surprise. After all, I’d embarked on the research partly because of the international circulation of South African reggae music. Four years earlier I had become fascinated by Capetonian reggae music in Finland, my home country. There a Finnish reggae band, Suhinators, had released <a href="https://www.discogs.com/Suhinators-Suhinators/release/1764267">an album</a> featuring two Capetonian vocalists, <a href="https://teba.bandcamp.com/">Teba Shumba</a> and <a href="http://www.crosbybolani.com/">Crosby Bolani</a>. </p>
<p>I remember being captivated by their music, particularly their militant lyrical style that seemed exotic and out of the ordinary to me. In Finland reggae music isn’t politicised in similar fashion.</p>
<p>In Cape Town, I learned that this collaboration between Capetonian and Finnish reggae artists wasn’t an isolated case. Teba Shumba also <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3XgZYFpEm7U">works</a> with a Brazilian music producer, for example. Crosby Bolani further collaborates with hip-hop legend <a href="http://www.allmusic.com/artist/dj-krush-mn0000949143">DJ Krush</a>. <a href="https://soundcloud.com/daddy-spencer-1">Daddy Spencer</a> voices <a href="http://segnaledigitale.org/dev/en/albums/digi-signa-013/">tracks</a> with the Italian production team <a href="http://segnaledigitale.org/dev/en/">Segnale Digitale</a>. <a href="https://www.musicinafrica.net/directory/black-dillinger">Black Dillinger</a> tours European music festivals. These are just a few of the recent intercontinental ventures of Capetonian reggae musicians.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Crosby Bolani collaborating with DJ Krush.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In addition, well-established Capetonian singers <a href="http://gugszoro.weebly.com/">Zoro</a> and <a href="http://vido-reggae.de/">Vido Jelashe</a> emigrated to Europe some years ago, but they still draw from township reality in their lyrical storytelling. </p>
<h2>Street cred via the ghetto</h2>
<p>In fact the lyrical and visual depictions of Cape Town’s ghetto conditions are central in rendering the artists with street credibility in all of these collaborations. In this sense, Capetonian reggae music is a part of a broader musical trend, where the metaphor of the ghetto has become central in the formation of transnational musical connections.</p>
<p>Cultural anthropologist Prof <a href="http://www.uva.nl/profiel/j/a/r.k.jaffe/r.k.jaffe.html">Rivke Jaffe</a> <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1468-2427.2012.01121.x/abstract">states</a> that,</p>
<blockquote>
<p>ghetto-based identifications allow the mobilisation of a broader, transnational belonging against the injustice of this immobility, helping to undermine the stigma of poverty and social marginality. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Identification with Rastafarian reggae music and its visual and lyrical narratives has indeed offered South African musicians inclusion in a global story of exclusion and injustice.</p>
<p>Rivke continues:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Ironically, it is the collective frame of immobility… which connects ghetto dwellers worldwide. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>This rings true for the Cape Town reggae scene. It’s practically invisible and inaudible in the main music venues of the city where the township audiences are not seen as a lucrative target group. Instead this township scene has formed a vibrant existence in YouTube music videos and in foreign music festivals. </p>
<p>Based on my experience as a researcher it seems that the main political significance of reggae music in general does not lie in its explicitly political lyrics. Instead it’s in the grassroots cultural connection that it has enabled. </p>
<p>Yet the question remains whether these international cultural connections are able to sustain solidarity between marginalised groups of people. Or is South African reggae music, for example, consumed abroad in ways which enforce stereotypes about the “notorious hoods” of the African cities among middle-class white audiences? </p>
<p>In addition, the financial rewards from these collaborations and tours are often very modest or non-existent for South African reggae musicians. </p>
<p>The musicians are very aware of the risk of financial or symbolic exploitation in the international circulation of their music. But what they find worthwhile are the symbolic rewards, such as the possibility to share a festival stage with Jamaican artists. Experiences like these are powerful because they once again grant outside recognition for the struggle for human dignity in South African cities.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/80419/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Authors' fieldwork in Cape Town was realized as a part of the research project “Youth Music and the Construction of Social
Subjectivities and Communities in Post-apartheid South Africa” led by Tuulikki Pietilä and based at
the University of Helsinki in the discipline of social and cultural anthropology and funded by the Academy of Finland (grant number 265976).</span></em></p>
Reggae in South Africa has lost its visibility and prominence inside the country after apartheid. But local artists have built up extensive international links.
Tuomas Järvenpää, Teacher in media culture and communication studies, University of Eastern Finland
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/60867
2016-11-20T12:13:10Z
2016-11-20T12:13:10Z
An open letter to Bob Marley: it’s time to create reggae dialogues
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/144359/original/image-20161103-25349-1jdv0b3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Bob Marley is still reggae's most iconic figure, 35 years after his death at the age of 36.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/dredrk/2386832426/">Flickr</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Dear Bob, </p>
<p>It’s been 35 years since your <a href="http://www.allmusic.com/artist/bob-marley-mn0000071514/biography">death</a>, yet no other singer or songwriter has articulated both the condition of the marginalised and the humanistic potentials of psychic decolonisation more than you. And, arguably, no other public intellectual has illuminated the role racism and classism play in shoring up the neocolonial political economy as poetically as you have. </p>
<p>When people gathered together to resist not being seen as people, as they did in Tahrir Square in Egypt, or at the beginning of the <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-12813859">Arab Spring</a> in <a href="http://www.popmatters.com/feature/157412-feelheartbeat-feel-an-interview-with-kevin-macdonald/">Tunisia</a>, they <a href="http://grantland.com/features/a-qa-kevin-macdonald-director-new-bob-marley-documentary/">called on your rhythms</a>, singing “Get up, stand up”. When the agony of <a href="http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=downpression">downpression</a> – the rest of the world outside Rastafarianism know it is as “oppression” – exceeds me, when images of social equality recede, I draw from your beats. Some say your oeuvre has become cliché.</p>
<p>This is more reflective of the way in which people listen over the meaning of your words than of your ideas becoming irrelevant. Still, what remains after all these years is your spirit. A spirit able to use words as transport. A spirit able to use the sound of poetry set to music to create images. Most importantly, a spirit able to shift affect from numbness to something near empathy, so that thought and recognition may rise in tandem with the concrete jungles you expose. </p>
<p>In spite of what you left us with, Bob, I am growing weary of backward steps in consciousness, of political regressions that grow the System – <a href="https://islandpen.wordpress.com/2012/10/25/what-does-babylon-mean-in-reggae/">“Babylon”</a> as Rastafarians call it – and by the daily slaughter of unprivileged people’s lives and bodies. I am, increasingly, relentlessly, thinking about psychic revolt, a distinctive way of thinking and feeling that fuels our acting against Babylon. </p>
<p>It is imperative for us to interrogate the world by going into our interior with integrity, made possible by scrutinising our relationship to social realities. I think this is what you meant when you implored us to emancipate ourselves mentally in “Redemption Song”.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Bob Marley singing ‘Redemption Song’</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>French feminist philosopher <a href="http://www.kristeva.fr/english.html">Julia Kristeva</a> characterises revolt as a fusion of “psychic revolt, analytic revolt, artistic revolt”. Together it produces:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>a state of permanent questioning, of transformation, change, an endless probing of appearances. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>But she pushes this idea further, Bob. She proposes that real revolt, not revolutionary movement which so often stalls, requires “unveiling, returning, discovering, starting over” through a process of “permanent questioning that characterises psychic life and, at least in the best of cases, art”.</p>
<h2>Growing psychic life</h2>
<p>This brings me to why I’m writing you so late in the day of our <a href="http://blog.oxforddictionaries.com/2016/02/bob-marley-lyrics/">exodus</a>. It’s time to put ideas from <a href="http://www.pacifica.edu/degree-programs/ma-phd-community-psychology-liberation-psychology-ecopsychology/community-ecological-fieldwork-research/what-is-liberation-psychology">liberation psychology</a>, specifically those about how to grow psychic life, together with roots or <a href="http://www.answers.com/Q/What_is_conscious_reggae?#slide=1">conscious reggae</a> music to carry on the unfinished business of decolonisation. </p>
<p>Such a pairing could help us enter into the state of mind where we question our social world unrelentingly and, most importantly, our contribution to its production. </p>
<p>We can create reggae dialogues, new ways of engaging psychological defences to liberation, which could evolve the work conscious reggae music set out to do. This form of dynamic dialogue could also aid our recognition that on their own neither inquiry nor socially conscious art (decoupled from analyses of realities it critiques) are ample responses to the traumas people face. Together, theory and art may cultivate conditions in which psychic space opens up allowing us to squarely confront Babylon’s harms.</p>
<p>I see this as a contribution to the development of psycho-aesthetic scholarly activism, the kind of work <a href="https://therapists.psychologytoday.com/rms/name/Barbara_Duarte_Esgalhado_PhD_New+York_New+York_88036">Barbara Duarte Esgalhado</a> is starting to do. This <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/269871610_Psycho-Aesthetic_Visual_and_Literary_Activism">work advocates</a> a kind of perceptual engagement that synthesises the different ways in which we come to know, to perceive and source the power to stand up. </p>
<p>Also think of the work of Brazilian theatre director <a href="http://ptoweb.org/aboutpto/a-brief-biography-of-augusto-boal/">Augusto Boal</a>. Imagine Boal’s <a href="https://brechtforum.org/abouttop">Theatre of the Oppressed</a>, which is a participatory theatre that fosters democratic and cooperative forms of interaction among participants, taking place in people’s minds, Bob. You know how reggae music fosters what philosopher Frantz Fanon promotes as <a href="http://www.thecritique.com/articles/why-frantz-fanon-still-matters/">disalienating shifts</a> in consciousness. Incorporating the affective charge of your art might make people’s social and political engagement all the more powerful.</p>
<h2>Wise but incomplete strategy</h2>
<p>Given your <a href="http://socialistreview.org.uk/292/bob-marley-roots-revolutionary">ideological commitments</a>, I believe that using the entertainment industry as your cultural intervention was a wise strategy but an incomplete one. Had you lived longer I would have hoped, given the importance and reach of your work, that you, like intellectuals in the academy, would gift your work to the cultural commons. </p>
<figure>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">One of Bob Marley’s ‘Three little birds’.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Ballads such as “One Love”, “No Woman No Cry”, “Three Little Birds”, “Could You Be Loved”, “Waiting in Vain” and “Turn Your Lights Down Low” could remain in the commercial catalogue benefiting the Marley Estate financially. Poetry and philosophy such as “So Much Things to Say”, “Running Away”, “We and Dem”, “War”, “So Much Trouble in the World”, “Guiltiness”, “Babylon System”, “Zimbabwe”, “Coming in From the Cold” and “Redemption Song” could be released immediately into the creative commons (public domain) available for collaboration with other cultural workers, gratis.</p>
<p>I’ve been thinking about this, Bob, because I’d like to create a reggae opera to tell the story of how downpressors – middle class people who don’t walk with the downpressed – turn a blind eye to their experience in Jamaica and elsewhere. I’m imagining hosting intimate groups where we encounter audio-visualscapes of the voice of the downpressor paired with images created by your music. If done right, the reggae opera experience could arouse psychic revolt catalysing conversations not routinely had in the (post)colonial world. </p>
<figure>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">‘Guiltiness’ from the Bob Marley album ‘Exodus’.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>For the past eight years I’ve listened to contemporary reggae music searching for the consciousness of Rastafarian ideology, a voice that hammers home anti-racist, anti-classist possibilities. I have yet to find the equivalence in tone, image and feel to what you produced, for example, in “Guiltiness”:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>These are the big fish (These are the big fish)</p>
<p>Who always try to eat down the small fish (Just the small fish)</p>
<p>I tell you again. </p>
<p>They would do anything</p>
<p>To materialise their every wish </p>
<p>Oh yeah. </p>
<p>But wait!</p>
<p>Woe to the downpressers. </p>
<p>They’ll eat the bread of sorrow</p>
<p>Woe to the downpressers. </p>
<p>They’ll eat the bread of sad tomorrow</p>
<p>Woe to the downpressers.</p>
<p>They’ll eat the bread of sorrow</p>
<p>Oh yeah. Oh yeah</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Bob, juxtaposing your song against narratives of downpressing could, if perceived deeply, crack open collective consciousness about the psychic underpinnings of Babylon, dismantling our denial of its structures.</p>
<p>From there we can start to build a humanising world. The question is: How can we release your radical thought into open space where it can work, in solidarity, with others?</p>
<p>In hope, Deanne</p>
<p><em>“An Open Letter to Bob Marley: Time to Create Reggae Dialogues” by Deanne Bell, was originally published in Obsidian: Literature & Art in the African Diaspora Vol. 41, No. 1&2 (2015): 107-110.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/60867/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Deanne Bell receives funding from the Antioch College Faculty Fund. </span></em></p>
More than three decades after his death reggae icon Bob Marley’s music remains meaningful. It still has the potential to catalyse conversation not often had in the postcolonial world.
Deanne Bell, Assistant Professor of Psychology, Antioch College
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/63347
2016-08-03T17:29:15Z
2016-08-03T17:29:15Z
Under the influence of … Bob Marley, the timeless music man
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/132752/original/image-20160802-17169-106om32.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Bob Marley's album 'Legend' is still an international bestseller</span> </figcaption></figure><p><em>In our new weekly series, “Under the influence”, we ask experts to share what they believe are the most influential works of art or artists in their field. Here, Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University’s Stewart Maganga explains why reggae megastar Bob Marley remains relevant, 35 years after his death in 1981.</em></p>
<p>It would be easy to dismiss <a href="http://www.bobmarley.com/">Bob Marley</a> (1945-1981) as someone who is and should remain a figure of the 20th century. However, this does not help to explain why even after his death from cancer three and a half decades ago, he continues to be revered by millions of people around the world. Marley’s images can be found almost everywhere, ranging from T-shirts and hats, to bags and even coffee mugs. His greatest hits compilation, “<a href="http://www.rollingstone.com/music/lists/500-greatest-albums-of-all-time-20120531/bob-marley-and-the-wailers-legend-20120524">Legend</a>”, has sold an estimated <a href="http://tsort.info/music/faq_album_sales.htm">27.9 million copies</a> since it was released in 1984. It still sells <a href="http://www.mixedracestudies.org/?p=20696">250,000 copies</a> a year.</p>
<p>If there is anything that is to be associated with <a href="http://www.allmusic.com/genre/reggae-ma0000002820">reggae</a> music, the Afrocentric religion of <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/rastafari/ataglance/glance.shtml">Rastafari</a>, or the Caribbean island of <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-18784061">Jamaica</a>, the first name that comes to mind is Bob Marley. Despite this, the reality that the world often tends to associate Marley with is far different from the one he grew up in more than 70 years ago.</p>
<p>Marley lived in a Jamaica that had experienced more than <a href="http://jis.gov.jm/information/jamaican-history/">200 years</a> of slavery and colonialism. This would have a great impact on him, considering that he was born from a <a href="https://debate.uvm.edu/dreadlibrary/gurtman02.htm">white father</a> and <a href="http://caribbean-beat.com/issue-93/mother-legend#axzz4G5zFwK1a">a black mother</a>. The key to understanding Marley was not merely the music but the life experiences that played a part in shaping the individual and, ultimately, the music that the world would come to know. </p>
<p>If there are three areas that played a part in shaping Marley the musician, it would have to be his experience of racism as a mixed-race person, his life in the slums of Kingston’s Trenchtown and his Rastafari beliefs. All three factors have combined to make Marley the so-called superstar that he is still known as today.</p>
<h2>Why Bob Marley remains an influential figure</h2>
<p>Marley’s influence was not limited to simply making music for the sake of entertainment. He was most noted for using his music to spread the message of Rastafari. Rastafari is a phenomenon that began in the 1930s in response to a message given by Jamaican nationalist <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/garvey_marcus.shtml">Marcus Garvey</a>, who proclaimed that African people in the diaspora should look to Africa, where a black king would be crowned. It was here that they would find their redemption.</p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/132759/original/image-20160802-17177-1t9h7m0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/132759/original/image-20160802-17177-1t9h7m0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=818&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/132759/original/image-20160802-17177-1t9h7m0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=818&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/132759/original/image-20160802-17177-1t9h7m0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=818&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/132759/original/image-20160802-17177-1t9h7m0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1029&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/132759/original/image-20160802-17177-1t9h7m0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1029&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/132759/original/image-20160802-17177-1t9h7m0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1029&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">An Ethiopian stamp of Haile Selassie.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>It so happened that on November 2 1930, <a href="http://www.thewhitereview.org/features/in-the-light-of-ras-tafari/">Tafari Makonnen</a> was crowned emperor of Ethiopia under his baptismal name, <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/guides/zqqx6sg">Haile Selassie</a>. Rastafari was <a href="http://jamaicans.com/orgins/">derived</a> from Haile Selassie’s name – it is a conflation of Ras, the title given to Amharic royalty in Ethiopia, and Tafari, his pre-coronation name.</p>
<p>What Marley brought to the world stage was something that was perhaps unique for its time. His tireless dedication and hard work to ensuring that the world came to learn and hear of Rastafari is in itself a major contributor to what made it into a global phenomenon.</p>
<p>Through Marley’s music, people in all corners of the world came to embrace Rastafari. This has helped shape the Rasta philosophy to the extent that it can no longer be attuned solely to the needs of believers in Jamaica. </p>
<p>It is found that everywhere it has been adapted to suit the needs and concerns of the society in which it has been embraced. This has further led Rasta scholars such as Richard Salter to <a href="http://www.ideaz-institute.com/Ideaz%20J%20Volumes/IDEAZ%20VOL7%202008.pdf">argue</a> that there is no one thing as Rastafari but rather only “Rastafaris”. What Salter means by this is that as a phenomenon Rastafari is understood in the societies where it is found. This further demonstrates how far and wide the phenomenon has spread globally. There are currently an estimated <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/rastafari/ataglance/glance.shtml">one million followers</a> around the world.</p>
<p>Marley’s message of Rastafari would further be extended to scholars who would play their part in educating the public about the nature of Rastafari. They would include, among others, <a href="http://www.oberlin.edu/archive/holdings/finding/RG30/SG64/biography.html">George Eaton Simpson</a>, <a href="http://www.cifas.us/sites/g/files/g536796/f/1960e_RasTafariMov_B.pdf">Rex Nettleford</a>, <a href="http://www.rootsreggaeclub.com/culture_reggae_afro/the_rastafarians/the_rastafarians_main.htm">Leonard E Barrett</a>, <a href="http://jamaica-gleaner.com/gleaner/20101106/lead/lead2.html">Barry Chevannes</a>, <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/272338580_Towards_a_New_Map_of_Africa_through_Rastafari_'Works'">Jahlani Niaah</a>, <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/41125667_'Cleave_to_the_Black'_expressions_of_Ethiopianism_in_Jamaica">Charles R Price</a>, <a href="http://jamaica-gleaner.com/gleaner/20120425/ent/ent2.html">Michael Barnett</a> and many others. Without Marley, scholarship on this phenomenon would not exist in such magnitude as is the case today.</p>
<h2>Why Bob Marley’s music is still relevant</h2>
<p>Although Marley may have lived in a world that is different to the one we find ourselves in today, the reality is that the human problems he encountered were no different from the ones we experience in the 21st century. </p>
<p>What is perhaps most significant about Marley’s music is that his message has transcended both time and space. We now find ourselves living in a post-9/11 world where mistrust and intolerance continue to remain dominant, as much as they were back then. It comes as no surprise because Marley spoke of the human condition.</p>
<figure>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Bob Marley’s ‘So Much Trouble in the World’.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>There are very few musicians in this present day that may claim to use their music to fight for causes that Marley may have fought for. Marley did not only speak about love and unity among all mankind as seen in his 1977 song <a href="http://www.songfacts.com/detail.php?id=3909"><em>One Love</em></a>. He also spoke about the sufferings of the world in his songs. These include <a href="http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/bobmarley/somuchtroubleintheworld.html"><em>So Much Trouble in the World</em></a>, <a href="http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/bobmarley/burninandlootin.html"><em>Burnin’ and Lootin’</em></a>, <a href="http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/bobmarley/johnnywas.html"><em>Johnny Was</em></a> and <a href="http://www.songfacts.com/detail.php?id=13282"><em>War</em></a>. This is what has made Marley not just relevant to his time but to ours as well.</p>
<h2>My relationship with the music of Bob Marley</h2>
<p>My relationship with Bob Marley’s music began when I was living in England in the 1980s. There was a BBC television programme that my parents used to watch every Thursday night called “<a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/totp/history/">Top of the Pops</a>”. One of the songs that introduced me to Marley’s music <em>One Love</em>. Little would I know that, over the years, I would become a fan of Bob Marley’s music and eventually become a scholar of the Rastafari phenomenon.</p>
<figure>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Bob Marley on ‘Top of the Pops’ in 1984.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Birds of a feather</h2>
<p>To understand Bob Marley the man, it is imperative not to solely listen to his music but also read biographies and watch documentaries that offer different perspectives of the man. Although there are a number of them, I would strongly recommend the following:</p>
<p>Biographies:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>“<a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7353179-bob-marley">Bob Marley: The Untold Story</a>” – Chris Salewicz (2009); and</p></li>
<li><p>“<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/44968.Catch_a_Fire">Catch a Fire: The Life of Bob Marley</a>” – Timothy White (1983).</p></li>
</ul>
<p>Documentaries:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>“<a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1183919/">Marley</a>” – directed by Kevin McDonald (2012); and</p></li>
<li><p>“<a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1297801/">Bob Marley: Freedom Road</a>” – directed by Sonia Anderson (2007).</p></li>
</ul><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/63347/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Stewart Maganga does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Bob Marley is one of those rare artists who continues to touch the hearts of millions of people across the world, even though he died more than three decades ago.
Stewart Maganga, Doctoral Candidate, Nelson Mandela University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/61726
2016-07-19T18:37:57Z
2016-07-19T18:37:57Z
Reggae pioneer Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry’s lessons in good music as good magic
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/130568/original/image-20160714-23365-10a41ve.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Balazs Mohai/EPA</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>As electronic music shape-shifts its way through the early years of the 21st century, the influence of dub – reggae’s stripped-down mutant version – on contemporary production is becoming more apparent. In “<a href="http://www.reaktionbooks.co.uk/display.asp?ISB=9781780231990">Remixology</a>”, Paul Sullivan <a href="https://books.google.co.za/books?id=4deKAwAAQBAJ&lpg=PP1&dq=remixology&pg=PT6#v=onepage&q&f=false">captures the fluidity</a> and complexity of dub as a diasporic form:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Ethereal, mystical, conceptual, fluid, avant-garde, raw, unstable, provocative, transparent, postmodern, disruptive, heavyweight, political, enigmatic … dub is way more than “a riddim and a bassline”, even if it is that too. Dub is a genre and a process, a “virus” and a “vortex”.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The work of <a href="http://www.upsetter.net/scratch/">Lee “Scratch” Perry</a>, who turned 80 in March 2016, is central to the way we perceive dub today. His influence is audible in the liquid electronica of <a href="http://pitchfork.com/artists/30594-arca/">Arca</a> and <a href="http://pitchfork.com/artists/30936-twigs/">FKA twigs</a>; the Afrocentric spiritualism and vivid sound collaging of <a href="http://www.allmusic.com/artist/flying-lotus-mn0000717419">Flying Lotus</a>; the sonic murk and vast reverberant spaces of <a href="http://www.allmusic.com/artist/burial-mn0000643682">Burial</a>, <a href="http://www.allmusic.com/artist/laurel-halo-mn0002613655">Laurel Halo</a> and <a href="http://www.allmusic.com/artist/actress-mn0001399533">Actress</a>; and the work of countless other cutting-edge producers. </p>
<p>Seen in this light, Scratch is a cornerstone of modern electronic popular music. But his work is so richly allusive, his persona so layered, that it’s possible to frame his contribution any number of ways.</p>
<figure>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">‘Magic Music’ by Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Good music is good magic</h2>
<p>Interviews with Scratch amount to a hall of mirrors for anyone searching for simple answers or posing simple questions. <a href="https://books.google.co.za/books?id=KQ2WFvz6GXUC&lpg=PP1&pg=PA128#v=onepage&q&f=false">John Corbett notes</a> that “[Scratch’s] is a discursive kingdom, a creative world of hidden connections and secret pacts exposed in language.”</p>
<p>Common strands do emerge in Scratch’s elaborate discourse though, ideas that recur and so seem central to his worldview and musical philosophy. I’ve <a href="https://dj.dancecult.net/index.php/dancecult/article/view/681">written previously</a> about outer space, cyborg, natural/ecological and religious imagery in Scratch’s work. Another concept that recurs as frequently is that of magic. </p>
<p>In an <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/music/musicblog/2016/mar/21/lee-scratch-perry-at-80-birthday-reggae-interview">interview</a> with the <em>Guardian</em>, a newly octogenarian Scratch was uncharacteristically direct on the subject: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Music is magic. If you have good music you have good magic. If you have good magic you will be followed by good people. Then they can be blessed by the one God. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>It’s obvious to identify Scratch as a practitioner of magic in relation to his use of language, his virtuosity with spoken and written words. Maybe it’s missing the point, though. By restlessly repurposing language, Scratch pushes it towards an adequate secondary expression of the complex, layered reality he expresses so effortlessly in sound. </p>
<p>What’s exciting here is not that we might think of Scratch as a maker of magic because of what he tells us. Rather, it is that we might calmly and with a sense of intellectual or academic rigour acknowledge the magic in his art.</p>
<h2>Production as the practice of magic</h2>
<p>Positioning Scratch’s work as attaining the qualities of magic is not the same as essentialising the image of the man himself, making him a caricature musical mystic or shaman. Similarly, I’m not looking to reduce the work to a set of instinctual, unintellectual functions either. On the contrary, the proposition is to properly acknowledge Scratch’s work as irreducibly complex, deeply layered, subtle and nuanced. </p>
<p>Reggae historian <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Bass-Culture-When-Reggae-King/dp/0140237631">Lloyd Bradley</a> has touched upon this quality of his work. Bradley attests to “an intrigue and multidimensionality too seldom even attempted in reggae”, and to musical ideas taken “way past the point at which logic would tell most people to stop, into a place where the instrumentation took on ethereal qualities”. </p>
<p>Filmmaker and author <a href="https://books.google.co.za/books?id=KQ2WFvz6GXUC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false">John Corbett</a> similarly observes that the producer pushed his rudimentary four-track <a href="http://www.soundonsound.com/people/lee-scratch-perry-daniel-boyle-recording-back-controls">Black Ark studio</a> in Kingston, Jamaica, “way past conceivable limits”.</p>
<figure>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Bob Marley with ‘Natural Mystic’, as produced by Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry in the latter’s Black Ark studio.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>It seems pressing now to reassert the status of record production – in the hands of a master of the art like Scratch – as the practice of magic, because from an educational perspective it’s increasingly difficult to do so.</p>
<p>It may have always been the case that to teach production as a creative discipline one has first to overcome some preconceptions: that it is primarily a technical activity; that there are right and wrong ways to do things; and that the success of a production can be assessed objectively. </p>
<p>For me, this means that while we need to be aware of the dangers of an uninterrogated mystical/mythical perspective on an artist like Scratch, the opposite danger of a reductive position that assumes his work can be understood simply, technically, that all of its qualities are tangible and replicable, is equally significant.</p>
<p>Auteurs like Scratch provide direct and convincing counterarguments to all of the above. We can analyse and deconstruct a production like <em>Bird in Hand</em> (from his album “<a href="http://www.allmusic.com/album/return-of-the-super-ape-mw0000174624">Return of the Super Ape</a>”, 1978). We can identify the tools and techniques used, and even demonstrate and replicate them with the nearest equivalent technologies available. But in doing so we still don’t really provide a template for remaking the particular sound of that mono-mix.</p>
<figure>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry’s ‘Bird in Hand’.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>We certainly don’t get close to the strange magic that resides in a near infinite number of contributing factors, including myriad tiny decisions made by Scratch and the <a href="https://thenewperfectcollection.com/2016/03/27/74-the-upsetters-the-return-of-the-super-ape-1978/">Upsetters</a> live to tape in his <a href="https://www.discogs.com/label/273585-The-Black-Ark">Black Ark</a> studio.</p>
<p>These include nuances of performance and recording; the needle pushing into the red as the kick drum hits, the character of the resultant distortion dependent on the reel of tape used that day; the temperature in the room; dust and dirt on the tape heads; the same factors affecting each layer of echo provided by a tape delay unit, the variation of the speed of the motor inside that unit; hands on faders and filters; the physical circuitry of the studio, then near the end of its life. As soon as we look closely, the character, the sound of the mix, reveals itself to be fantastically complex, ultimately impossible to unravel. </p>
<p>In some ways, this is clear and simple. It’s easy to assert in the face of a reductive approach that art just doesn’t work that way. But changing educational climates make the alternative position – that the art of production can’t be delivered and measured so simply – more difficult to defend.</p>
<h2>Beyond reductionism</h2>
<p>A neoliberal educational context requires that the learning product sold by universities is neatly delineated, the success of the enterprise easily assessed. This model of “knowledge transfer” founders if the thing to be known is in part intangible, too complex to communicate in the course of, say, a two-hour lecture, and is itself born of experience.</p>
<p>If the question is how do we fit the magic of artists like Lee “Scratch” Perry into this framework, I’d propose the answer is that we cannot – and we should not seek to do so. </p>
<p>In “<a href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/teaching-art-in-the-neoliberal-realm-realism-versus-cynicism/oclc/795528575">Teaching Art in the Neoliberal Realm</a>”, Stefan Hertmans grapples with what art might mean as a subject to be taught:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Perhaps art “works”, simply and incomprehensibly at the same time, precisely because we do not know what it is and cannot predict it. Because artists create art, they can afford to sidestep the question about its essence: it is clear from what they do. They embody its essence in their practice.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>I don’t think this goes quite far enough. To observe that there are elements in any work of art that are essential but cannot be easily explained in a technically reductive sense is not to “sidestep the question about its essence”. It is to provide the most substantial, nuanced and truthful answer to that question.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/g9PcNQxM_cQ?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">One of Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry’s best known songs, ‘Disco Devil’.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Seeking an example of record production as the practice of magic, we could wish for none better than the extraordinary work of Lee “Scratch” Perry. As an educator, if I’m obliged to ignore that aspect of Scratch’s work, I’m dismissing much of what it can teach.</p>
<p>To argue for the magic in this music is to argue for its status as art – sophisticated, compelling and profound. When <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/music/musicblog/2016/mar/21/lee-scratch-perry-at-80-birthday-reggae-interview">Scratch tells us</a> that “the breath of live God” can manifest in his work as “perfect magic, perfect logic, perfect science”, he’s emphasising not a plurality of expression, but a one-ness. Magic, science and logic here are intertwined, inextricable and indistinguishable.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/61726/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>John Harries does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
One of popular music’s most influential artists, Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry, turned 80 this year. It is a good time to acknowledge his work as irreducibly complex, deeply layered, subtle and nuanced.
John Harries, Lecturer in Popular Music, Goldsmiths, University of London
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/48135
2015-10-07T05:33:54Z
2015-10-07T05:33:54Z
Review: A Brief History of Seven Killings by Marlon James
<p>In <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/books/2002/jul/21/vsnaipaul">Middle Passage</a> (1962), V S Naipaul’s account of revisiting the Caribbean, the author is swept up by the voices of its inhabitants. As one taxi driver tells him: “Is only when you live here as long as me that you know the sort of animal it is.” Understanding exactly what sort of “animal” Jamaica is also lies at the heart of Marlon James’s Booker-winning novel <a href="https://www.oneworld-publications.com/books/marlon-james/a-brief-history-of-seven-killings#.Vg6jjY9Viko">A Brief History of Seven Killings</a>. </p>
<p>Like Middle Passage, James’s book is a whirlwind of different voices, intertwining and separating as the novel proceeds. Yet unlike Middle Passage there is no artful attempt to spare the darkness of what was once the heart of the slave trade. As one of James’s characters says when talking about Naipaul’s travelogue, “the beauty of how him write that sentence still lie to you as to how ugly [West Kingston] is”. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/97094/original/image-20151002-23065-1iugihy.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/97094/original/image-20151002-23065-1iugihy.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=926&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/97094/original/image-20151002-23065-1iugihy.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=926&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/97094/original/image-20151002-23065-1iugihy.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=926&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/97094/original/image-20151002-23065-1iugihy.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1164&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/97094/original/image-20151002-23065-1iugihy.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1164&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/97094/original/image-20151002-23065-1iugihy.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1164&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Ostensibly A Brief History of Seven Killings is about the <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/music/2006/jul/16/urban.worldmusic">failed assassination</a> of Bob Marley, immediately before a peace concert organised by the socialist People’s National Party (PNP) in 1976. Marley was wounded but went on to play the concert. He left straight afterwards and did not return to Jamaica for two years. The gunmen were never brought to justice and their identities remain a mystery.</p>
<p>The fog of uncertainty surrounding these events has elevated them to mythical status. James takes the few facts that are known and runs with them, as any novelist worth his salt would. We have seven assassins, perhaps drawing on Kurosawa’s <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0047478/">Seven Samurai</a> (1954); but in James’s tale these guys are certainly not on the side of the angels. The novel follows their fictional deaths over the coming years, a gruesome catalogue of violence fuelled by cocaine and guns, with the truly demonic Josey Wales at its centre. </p>
<p>The novel has a formidable cast list of 75 characters. Although some have only walk-on parts, a large number speak to us directly, forming a bewildering collage of voice. Pretty much all of them are fictional although some, such as the journalist <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/22/books/marlon-jamess-a-brief-history-of-seven-killings.html">Alex Pierce</a>, are based on actual people. Perhaps the most interesting is that of Sir Arthur Jennings, a murdered Jamaican politician, again fictional, who becomes a sort of one-man Greek chorus narrating from the grave. As he says right at the beginning of the novel, “dead people never stop talking”.</p>
<p>It is through these different voices that we get the garbled, fractured fates of the gunmen. But we also get much more. Slowly we begin to see the murky involvement of the CIA, desperate to prize Jamaica away from its growing infatuation with communist Cuba. As Papa-lo, the don of Copenhagen City, implores fruitlessly, “save order from chaos”. Yet if there’s a message in James’s tale, it’s that the scars of slavery and oppression run deep. And with such a heart of darkness, chaos will never be far away.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/97226/original/image-20151005-28777-1cwofbu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/97226/original/image-20151005-28777-1cwofbu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/97226/original/image-20151005-28777-1cwofbu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/97226/original/image-20151005-28777-1cwofbu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/97226/original/image-20151005-28777-1cwofbu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/97226/original/image-20151005-28777-1cwofbu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/97226/original/image-20151005-28777-1cwofbu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Marlon James.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">© Jeffrey Skemp</span></span>
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</figure>
<p>The success of James’s novel ultimately rests with the strength of these voices. The Jamaican characters are particularly compelling. Less successful are the middle-class Americans, the journalist Alex Pierce and the CIA chief, Barry Diflorio. </p>
<p>Yet the ambition of the novel can’t be denied. James in his acknowledgements cites the importance of William Faulkner’s <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/oct/06/100-best-novels-as-i-lay-dying-william-faulkner">As I Lay Dying</a> (1930) although perhaps a stronger comparison can be made to the earlier work <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/books/2012/jul/20/sound-fury-william-faulkner-rereading">The Sound and the Fury</a> (1929). Like Faulkner, James uses the full range of first-person trickery, including long single-sentence stream of consciousness and even a poem. </p>
<p>Yet, famously, even Faulkner had to switch to third person right at the end of The Sound and the Fury to bring the story together. James’s novel doesn’t do this but it does suffer from the weaknesses of his enforced solipsism in other ways, the need for artificial summary, for example, and the crow-barring in of historical context. As a consequence A Brief History of Seven Killings has a curiously old-fashioned feel to it, a return to the experimentalism of the early 20th century. Recent novels such as Will Self’s <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/books/2012/aug/19/umbrella-will-self-review">Umbrella</a> (2012) and David Peace’s <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/10208563/Red-or-Dead-by-David-Peace-review.html">Red or Dead</a> (2013) have shown how the great Modernist project can be pushed forwards in new and exciting ways. </p>
<p>This is not to say that what James is doing isn’t exciting and important in its own way. It’s rather that the experimental part of the novel is less the bravura of its form and more the forensic exposition of its subject, the deep emotional scars of the Caribbean. It looks like Naipaul’s taxi driver was right all along.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/48135/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Spencer Jordan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Marlon James’s book is a whirlwind of different voices ostensibly about the infamous failed assassination of Bob Marley in 1976.
Spencer Jordan, Deputy Director for Creative Writing, University of Nottingham
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.