BOB MARLEY & THE WAILERS / “Rastaman Chant”

A few days ago, I sent an email to Paul Roberts of P.R.A.D.E. fame (prade.blogspot.com) and happened to mention that BoL was going to be doing a post on Damien Marley. He wrote back the following:

I have a friend who earnestly claims that he thinks the [Damien Marley] track ‘Welcome To Jamrock’ is (I quote) "hotter than anything his father ever put out." Has the white-pothead appropriation of Bob Marley the image made his music lose all its potency for the next generation?
Good question, Paul. marley 04.jpg I grew up thinking of Bob Marley as a black revolutionary. That he was also a musician was (relatively) incidental. In my eyes, Marley was no different than X or Tubman or King or Coltrane. The Salaam children learned that all of these people were heroes who fought for the rights of the poor, the downtrodden, the enslaved, the dispossessed. I had no particular interest in any of their individual stories—at the time, I was probably more interested in Mario Bros. video games or Spiderman comic books. Still, I learned about these people and their activities because that’s what the children of the black revolution did—we learned about our heroes and their activities. Later, as a teenager, I revisited these stories—X’s autobiography; King’s recorded speeches; stories and pictures about Tubman; and of course, the music of Marley and Coltrane. I realized then that all those boring stories I’d been forced to sit through, and all those posters with the mean-looking faces that had stared down at me through the years, and all that annoying music I’d ignored my whole life to that point, had actually served to prepare me for me. Unlike my friends, I didn’t have to stumble my way through a lengthy and intense spiritual awakening. For me, learning about the historical and ongoing struggle of black and brown peoples in the Americas was like going back home. There was nothing strange or difficult about it. It came easily. And it felt good. By my early twenties, I’d spent four years at an (almost) all-white high school and I’d worked several years at Tower Records in the French Quarter. At those two institutions, I learned that Bob Marley wasn’t a black revolutionary after all. In actuality, Bob was part of a (un)holy trinity of wild-eyed, long-haired, brown-skinned, pot-smoking dudes whose chief function seemed to be giving white hippie wanna-be’s something to put on the front of their T-shirts. The perceptive reader will note that the word ‘trinity’ is a reference to a group of three, and therefore, either at my (almost) all-white high school or at Tower Records in the French Quarter, or at both, I must have learned of the existence of two other wild-eyed, long-haired, brown-skinned, pot-smoking dudes. I did indeed. They are Jimi Hendrix (whom I’d previously thought of as an electric blues and rock guitarist) and Che Guevara (leftist radical and co-leader of the Cuban Revolution). Today, nearly 25 years after the last member of the trinity met his untimely demise (Che was assassinated in ’67, Hendrix OD’d in ’70, Marley succumbed to cancer in ‘81) anyone with fifteen bucks and a torso can still be seen as a counter-cultural cooler-than-thou type simply by going to their friendly neighborhood Target and purchasing a T-shirt bearing the image of one of said trinity. (Having even the slightest clue as to what these gentlemen meant or continue to mean to anyone who found or continues to find them meaningful is strictly optional.) I could go on, but I won’t. Suffice it to say that Paul asked a good question—“Has the white-pothead appropriation of Bob Marley the image made his music lose all its potency for the next generation?”—and I have a simple answer. That answer is ‘yes.’ Luckily for me, I am not of ‘the next generation’ and, as such, Bob Marley’s music retains all of the potency of an atomic bomb. marley 02.jpg I wanted to post some tracks that would be accessible for those who only know Bob Marley’s most popular hits while being obscure enough to interest those who own most of the albums and probably have no desire to hear “I Shot The Sheriff,” “One Love” or “Three Little Birds” yet again. The feature track is one of my favorite semi-rarities. It’s Marley with Peter Tosh and Joe Higgs (who was sitting in for the refusing-to-travel-anywhere-with-the-potential-for-cold-weather Bunny Wailer) doing a rougher yet somehow prettier version of “Rastaman Chant” than the one that appears on American pressings of The Wailers’ 1973 album Burnin’. This version of “Rastaman” was recorded and broadcast live in San Francisco in October of 1973, not long before the original Wailers officially broke up. The combination of the powerful drumming and the soaring vocals always lifts my spirits. “Jah Live” is Marley’s tribute to his spiritual father, Haile Selassie. Marley recorded the song in 1975, just after Selassie’s death. Like all Rastafarians, Marley believed that Selassie was “the true and living God,” “ever faithful, ever living, ever sure” and therefore Selassie could not actually be dead. Marley apparently went to his grave believing that Selassie was still alive somewhere and that reports of his (Selassie's) death were a scam. In Timothy White's Marley bio, Catch A Fire, White writes of Marley singing so passionately during this recording that, by the end of the session, Marley was literally drenched with sweat. The last track is an alternate take of “Time Will Tell,” the gorgeous tune which closes Marley’s unfairly maligned 1978 album, Kaya. By the late Seventies, We Who Believe in Freedom were unwilling to allow our heroes to do anything other than Believe in Freedom. (If you don’t know what I’m talking about, don’t worry about it. It’s an inside thing. emoticon) Therefore, for those of us predisposed to never letting the fight rest, Kaya was a major disappointment. The album is nearly all love songs: love songs to women, love songs to Jamaica and, of course, love songs to the weed. In my main man’s defense: a) They’re all beautiful songs, b) He still gave us “Crisis” and “Running Away” and, c) In ’79, he returned to his revolutionary ways with the incendiary polemics of Survival, just like we knew he would. The San Francisco version of “Rastaman Chant” is available on a CD named Talkin’ Blues. The latter two songs are available on the soundtrack to the movie Countryman. Both CDs are well worth the purchase price.
* * *
I am typing these words while wearing a Jimi Hendrix T-shirt I bought at a Target in Austin, TX with a gift card I got by returning an interesting pair of pants donated to me by a kind-hearted but misguided individual who was under the apparent impression that I would be pausing during my evacuation travails to play a round of golf. I’m not making any of this up. —Mtume ya Salaam           Natural mystic           marley 03.jpeg Many of us have Bob Marley stories. I met him once. Backstage. The lion in repose. Sitting in a chair. I was supposed to interview him. I had the tape recorder. Was stooping down in front of him, off to the side. He languidly lounging, his body draped across the chair like a damp shirt. Totally relaxed. Except. His eyes. Intense. Piercing. He made me feel like anything I had to say, any question I was going to ask was inconsequential. And as my brain raced to make the words come out so that I might sound halfway acceptable, we were deluged with two white guys bringing 57 varieties of weed. A brother who was intent on debating the Bible. A host of other hangers-on and hang-arounders, clamoring at widely-varying levels of rudeness for his attention—and so finally I came to my senses and realized, I really wasn’t going to get any kind of one-on-one interview in that circus atmosphere surrounding brother Bob. I left. But I had seen what I needed to see. I had seen Bob playing harder at the sound check than most musicians play in the spotlight. I had seen him so totally invested in trance that I was certain he was going to hurt himself as he hurled his body around the stage, his face missing a gigantic speaker by inches. And of course the concert had been wondrous. Magical. I had seen Bob Marley. And seen the I-Threes—these were mature women, each of them a personality in her own light, I was especially smitten by Judy Mowatt. The Barrett brothers on drum and bass were so tight, so right on the one, so foundational. I had seen enough. Heard enough. Experienced enough in those six or seven hours I spent on the periphery of the Marley camp that I didn’t need to talk to him to write all I needed to write. Many, many years later, whenever I wore my Bob Marley T-shirt in the high school classroom where I taught, one or two of the young brothers would smile, bob their head up and down, and say something sly like: "Yeah, I know you be hitting it too, you be smoking that herb." And I realized with a complicated sadness that for far too many of them, Bob Marley mainly meant getting high and staying high, religiously. Also, I had been long aware of Bob’s womanizing. I never smoked. And am very strict with myself about relations with women—i mean all relationships, not just sexual relationships. And beyond all of that, I don’t believe in any organized religion, not a one of them. None. Not any. So there would seem to be a disconnect. Nevertheless although there is a distance and, in some cases, disagreements, there is no disconnect. marley 01.jpg The music of Bob Marley touched me and continues to be meaningful to me for a couple of strong reasons. One—Bob was a masterful musician, who poured the best of himself into his music. Two—Bob was genuinely committed to the uplift of the downtrodden. Yes, I believe he was a Natural Mystic. I believe he believed in what he was doing. And so I choose that song to go with the ones Mtume has chosen. There’s a natural mystic. Blowing in the air. And so, I wear my Bob Marley T-shirt, even at the risk of being mistaken for a dope-head, I embrace Bob Marley the man in all his bittersweet contradictions. He never slacked off in creating his art. And he never ever sold out or compromised his commitment to our people. Marley. That’s a plenty. Marley. That’s enough! —Kalamu ya Salaam

This entry was posted on Sunday, October 9th, 2005 at 12:01 am and is filed under Classic. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.


17 Responses to “BOB MARLEY & THE WAILERS / “Rastaman Chant””

Dankwa Says:
October 9th, 2005 at 7:12 pm

Kalamu, Greetings!


This Marley piece is on point. Additionally, the music selections are well thought out and well received. 

Peace, Dankwa

Kevin M. Says:
October 10th, 2005 at 11:25 am

Greetings, Kalamu, Mtume, and Breath of Lifers…

I have enjoyed and benefitted in so many ways from all the Breath of Life editions, can’t adequetely express thanks enough for that, but this is the first time I have been moved to submit a comment.

It’s actually a question about Marley’s dialogue with Curtis Mayfield in One Love/People Get Ready.

Traditionally, the story is that People Get Ready came out in 64/65 and was incorporated in One Love on the Exodus album in 75/76. Then I got ahold of Peter Tosh’s compilation Scrolls of the Prophet and there is a ska version of One Love, dated 1964, pre-dating the release of People Get Ready, with exactly the same lyrics, including the phrases that also appear in People Get Ready.

The musical and lyrical dialogue works whether it occured with near-simultaneity in the 60s or later in the 70s, and it works whoever recorded first. But I like to know the historical facts if possible and have not found any definitive account of this dialogue yet.

Anyone willing/able to provide illumination?

Kevin Meehan
Orlando FLA

Mtume says:                                                      

Kevin,

I’m no expert on Marley, Tosh or the Wailers, but the way I understand it, Marley re-recorded many songs that were originally done by the Wailers. If you look for some of the older (pre-Burnin’), indie-label Wailers compilations, you’ll find lots of songs like "Natural Mystic," "400 Years," "Duppy Conqueror," etc., that Marley later re-did on some of the more popular Tuff Gong/Island albums.

The song "People Get Ready" and the lyrics in question ("Is there a place for the hopeless sinner / Who has hurt all mankind just to save his own?") were definitely written by Curtis Mayfield. The version you heard by Peter Tosh (more likely by The Wailers with Tosh singing lead) is in all likelihood an early version of "One Love." Later, when Marley re-recorded it, they probably changed the title to "One Love"/"People Get Ready" and officially gave Mayfield co-composer credit. By then, Marley was an industry. Everything would’ve had to be done ‘correctly.’

That’s my educated guess, anyway. If anyone knows differently, let us know. 

Mtume. 


kp Says:
October 10th, 2005 at 9:12 pm

i can’t shake the feeling that you fellas are being lazy in simply blaming “white pothead appropriation.”

i’ll get it out of the way: i’m white.

i understand the argument. i’ve seen “white reggae” bands and they just don’t do it for me. (something missing, you know?)

and i realize white appropriation of black culture is a consistent trend in american culture. (i’d rather not talk minstrel show stuff, tho)

but you can’t just lift bob to iconic status without laying some blame at his feet.

because he was 50% white.

and 100% “pothead.”

not to compare the man with any “stoner” off the street, but he set a standard for that. how can you praise what he did in life and ignore how he walked through it? was it only a “sacrament” when bob fired up the chalice?

and he obviously wanted the “hippies” to dig his music. how else can you explain the sugarcoating of his message on tracks like “3 little birds?”

don’t just blame the “white potheads.” blame bob for wanting as many people as possible to hear his music and find his message. (he dropped that patois when he sung, didn’t he?)

on a side note, “i like all music except reggae” seems to have become the new “i like all music except country” among a number of white people i talk to about music. usually for the same reason: “white hippie pothead appropriation.” shit is strange…….

 

          "50% white / 100% pothead"        

was bob 50% white? 100% pothead? genetically his father was white, so if one uses "race" (i.e. designation by skin/blood") then, of course, you could say that. but for many of us "blackness" (and by extension "whiteness") is color ("race"), culture and consciousness, with color being the least important of the three. culture is how one lives and the values one espouses in that living—by that criterion, bob certainly was not even 2% white. consciousness is one’s self-concept and who/what one identifies with—by that concept bob was more black than white but certainly some parts white (hey, man, did you read the post on damien marley?).

but more than that, dear white person, we black people have had to deal for a long, long time with the fact that our blackness is not pure, that we are mixed biologically. race as a biological fact does not mean that a much to me. on the other hand, the sociological implications of race within the western world obviously impacts me tremendously, and whether i want to or not, i have to deal with the western world wanting to define me based on race. fuck that bloody business. race alone does not now and never did define me.

did you read our discussion of bob’s contradictions? ok, if you missed it the first go round, please read it again. both mtume and i are totally aware of bob’s contradictions.

now, as far as pothead goes, let’s go all the way there. his religious use of sensi in the context of being a rasta is obvious, but what is not so obvious is the question of why did/do a significant percentage of "whites" embrace reggae (some even going to the extent of attempting to dread their hair)?

in america, the initial audience for reggae was overwhelmingly white. bob wanted to break through and reach his black american brethren and sistren. that is no secret. indeed there was a conscious effort to do so. for those who are interested, if you read the critical literature on reggae in general and bob in particular, you will find that issue discussed in great detail.

i would like to ask just one question: regardless of the intent of the individual embracer or the stance of the individual embracee, why is it that a white embrace of a non-white other so often ends up being an appropriation?

the answer is simple: capitalism.

or, as many jamaican brethren say: whitewell is a vampire (refering of course to chris blackwell, the white head of island records), the same capitalist who created bob marley and the wailers, thereby forever dispersing the wailers as a collective trio of bob, peter tosh and bunny wailer. bunny refused to tour, and peter and bob had a falling out. blackwell got his wish, one black man to push, who, only coincidentally (?), was racially the mulatto of the trio. was bob priviliged by blackwell because bob was 50% white, was bob receptive to being priviliged because bob was 50% white, or was bob too stoned most of the time to give a damn? it sounds ridiculous doesn’t it? but those are real and difficult questions. from a "white" perspective you can ask those questions and there is no pain associated with it—if you black, it hurts to deal with those contradictions.

you want to know what’s easy? it’s easy to be white and cavilier about race and all the implications of race, about capitalism and all the implications of capitalism. precisely because both race and capitalism as they have existed for centuries are driven by white appropriation of people, land and resources. the only reason we’re having this particular discussion is because "some" whites decided that the world was their’s for the taking and most whites went along with that bullshit.

you know what’s not easy—being black in a white-dominated world.

put that (the ease of whites/the difficulties of blacks) in your chalice and smoke it.

—kalamu

 


kp Says:
October 11th, 2005 at 2:15 pm

put that in my chalice and smoke it, huh?

let me clarify a few things:

first, i wasn’t trying to be cavalier about race in my comments. perhaps that’s what came across in my attempt at simplicity, but it’s not what i intended.

despite my comment that i was white, i don’t believe that word defines or encompasses me either. (call it a lazy disclaimer).

i’m fully aware of the capitalist forces at work, both amongst the original wailers, in the music industry, and in western imperialism. though it always disappoints me to be told that i can ask these kinds of questions free of pain, i’m not going to suggest i know what yours, or any other man’s, feels like.

what bothered me most about your original post was not a failure to discuss bob’s contradictions, but that the “white pothead” comments seemed directed at the individual with the target t-shirt, not the capitalist appropriation machine behind the screen printing.(have you seen the latest tuff gong fashion line? “inspired by bob” clothing with prices that only flossers – like…. damian?- can afford). it just felt, to me, like a finger pointed in the wrong direction.

i’ve been plenty guilty of the same. as i briefly mentioned before, i have “white” friends who refuse reggae because of the “hippie effect” or because it reminds them of “mai tais on the beach.” now that shit pisses me off, and i often find myself defending the music without defending the hippies (fuck a mai tai tho), which is a bit wrong, i think.

see bob’s music is personal to me, largely for the same reasons that kalamu mentioned in his post: “One—Bob was a masterful musician, who poured the best of himself into his music. Two—Bob was genuinely committed to the uplift of the downtrodden.” i don’t suggest that i can listen to his, or any other racially-charged, music in a bubble of ignorance to my own whiteness. hell, i probably have bob to thank for that. but i also refuse to believe that i can’t feel it as much, that it should mean less to me, because of my “ease” in walking through this world. but at the same time, i don’t want to knock the red-eyed gringo in dreads because of what i think he represents.

anyways, “important” figures and messages get perverted into caricatures all the time, whether by placing their likeness on a t-shirt or their music on a commercial for tourism.

i visit this site often and respect what you guys are doing. but this one time i thought you found the answer to your friend’s question rather quickly and felt compelled to see it fleshed out, perhaps selfishly, but well, there you go………..

 

Mtume says:                                             

 

Whassup K.P.,

I have a little bit of a different take on this than Kalamu’s.

First, I don’t think your question was illegitimate or cavalier. That’s that.

Second, the phrase ‘white pothead appropriation’ wasn’t mine, as you know, so it’s a little hard for me to defend the specific phrasing when it wasn’t mine to begin with. That given, what a think Paul had in mind (and I think you’re well aware of the phenomenon) is the youngish people of any race who latch on to Bob’s image while knowing little or nothing about his music or his message. If such a kid happens to be black, I don’t think I or Paul (or you) would consider that a contradiction of Paul’s point. Sometimes we speak in shorthand.

Third, there is definitely a sort of smugness at work in both Kalamu’s attitude ("the ease of whites/the difficulties of blacks") and in black folk’s attitude in general towards ‘the race issue.’ Just as you can’t know what I feel, I can’t know what you feel. For example, I feel guilty quite often about having ‘made it’ out of the Lower Ninth Ward while nearly all of my friends (and ‘nearly all’ is not an exaggeration) are playing out the stereotypical ‘dead, in jail or on drugs’ scenario. I know it’s not my ‘fault’ that I’m where I am while the friends I grew up with are where they are, still, it hurts and it actually impacts my day-to-day decision-making. Following that line of reasoning, if I were a white male, would I feel guilty quite often about the inherent advantages of being a white male in America? Or would I be angry that I’m ‘made’ to feel guilty? Or would I feel no guilt whatsoever? Should I feel any? Or should I think of myself as simply one individual who can’t be responsible for the ongoing problems of an entire race of people so many years after the fact? I don’t know. I can’t know. Therefore, I don’t think it’s fair to conclude (even partly in jest): whites have it easy, blacks have it difficult.

Fourth, the reason I mentioned Target is precisely because I was critiqueing the capitalist system that makes this appropriation possible.

And last, I think you know what I meant in the first place and you just felt like throwing a fit.

Peace, you non-potsmoking, Bob Marley-loving-for-all-the-right-reasons white guy you,

Mtume.


jb Says:
October 11th, 2005 at 2:48 pm

Excellent post. On a related note: my relationship to Marley and his legacy was increasingly troubled by Rita’s revelation that Marley beat her.

And also The Onion humorously addressed Marley’s prominent demographic in an article entitled:
“Bob Marley Rises From Grave To Free Frat Boys From Bonds Of Oppression”
Link:http://www.theonion.com/content/node/41242


Manuel Says:
October 12th, 2005 at 10:28 am

“Una estampita de Bob Marley puede salvarte la vida en cualquier ghetto del mundo”. Manu Chao

Bob Marley is universal


Suman Says:
October 12th, 2005 at 12:00 pm

Appreciating all of this: the tracks you posted, your essays, and the ensuing dialogue.

Getting back to the Curtis Mayfield/"People Get Ready" thread: it ocurred to me that this, and more generally the Wailers’ and other early ska groups taking inspiration from American R&B, is another example of the hidden influences of American black music, which then bounces back to us.

Other examples are Detroit techno and Chicago house going to Europe and coming back to us as "electronica", or funk going to West Africa and becoming Afrobeat. (Does Gilroy talk about this in "The Black Atlantic"?)

A New Yorker essay about African music in western Europe had a few paragraphs about this idea of music bouncing back and forth between continents.

Mtume says:                                            

Suman,

The phenomenon is indeed wonderful. Black Jamaicans heard American R&B via New Orleans R&B stations. Their imitation of R&B morphed into ska, which morphed into rock steady, which morphed into something they called ‘talk over.’ A young Jamaican named Kool Herc brought the ‘talk over’ and DJ culture of Jamaica with him to the Bronx. Which is how we ended up with hip-hop. Only the hip-hop kids weren’t listening to reggae, they were raiding their parents’ record collections to play the breaks on 10 year-old soul and funk records. It’s a beautiful thing.

By the way, there’s been a lot of scholarship devoted to documenting/investigating/celebrating the give and take of Africa-derived music. My favorite book on the subject (by far) is Christopher Small’s Music Of The Common Tongue. If you can find it, do yourself a favor and buy it. It will change the way you listen to music. For the better.

Later on…

Mtume.


kp Says:
October 12th, 2005 at 5:29 pm

sometimes a man just wants some impassioned, intelligent conversation……….

peace mtume & kalamu


Mtume Says:
October 12th, 2005 at 10:51 pm

OK folks,

I’ll let the man who started all of this have the last word. I sent a note to Paul apologizing for using a quote of his that was actually part of a private conversation. To which he responded (and said it was OK to reprint):

* * *

I stand by the phrase. I didn’t meet one white kid in college that smoked excessive pot that didn’t have a Bob Marley poster up or have a Marley T-shirt. However, I in no way implied that a white person that smokes pot is not allowed to listen to or love Marley. I just meant that that guy seems to now be the dominant perception of who listens to Marley’s music.

And I think the racial dimension is important. White people get so defensive if anyone uses the word white to describe an audience. The dude responding to your post immediately got defensive like “I have every right to like Marley.” Of course he does. And White potheads have every right to put up posters and wear Marley shirts. But that doesn’t change the observational truth that the perception of Marley has changed.

And for the record my friend who commented that Jamrock was hotter than any of Bob’s work was Black. And that is my point. To him, Bob has lost his relevancy. He has grown up around a culture that included only a simulacrum of Marley – he has never actively seeked out information about Marley and his music and words and life – so to him the dominant image of Marley is not of a man sweating with passion in his denim shirt as he sings about freedom and opression. To him, the dominant image of Marley is holding a spliff looking down from a white pothead’s dorm room. No one person is to blame – as you point out. It is the product of a system that we all play a part in. But I guess “White” has become too loaded of a term for some people – it isn’t always accusatory.

[End of Paul’s response.]

* * *

OK. After that, all I can say is: I agree.

Later, all.

Mtume.


Rosalind Says:
October 17th, 2005 at 12:10 pm

I think this whole topic touches on the larger issue of the appropriation of Black music and culture and what happens when Black people do not inform themselves about our history. I teach at a communications college and I force my students to analyze the most political of Bob’s wellknown-songs–‘Get, Up Stand Up” and “Buffalo Soldiers.” I say force because as it’s been pointed out, all of my mostly white students knew Bob and his music for only the ganja image and the rasta posing. None of them had taken the time to go beyond that and never would, if I didn’t make it a class requirement. What bothers me is that Bob is just one of a long line of politically potent Black musicians who have become lost to a whole generation. They’re not lost just because of appropriation but because we allow who listens to certain musicians to decide if they are approriate for Black people to listen to. We have abandoned Bob and Jimi and Chuck and a host of others because we don’t want to be associated with the masses of silly white people who listen to them. We have the power to take them back and place them in their rightful positions within Black culture. We just have to be interested and informed enought to do it.


Suman Says:
October 25th, 2005 at 11:33 am

Mtume, thanks for the followup–fascinating stuff about the roots of ska in New Orleans R&B radio broadcasts going out over the Caribbean. I hadn’t read about that before. But it reinforces something I did read somewhere in a recent post-Katrina essay about NO–that rather than US-centrically thinking of it as the southernmost metropolis of the US, it has historically been the northernmost metropolis of the Caribbean.

Thanks also for the book rec–I will try to track down a copy of Small’s book.

Finally, a few days after reading your essays, I looked down…and realized I was wearing a Bob Marley T-shirt! Memorably, I bought it in a shop in Bariloche, Argentina…the teenage girl working the store was super-excited that my wife and I were into reggae, and started playing a tape by a reggae group from Buenos Aires for us…


Big Tub Says:
January 16th, 2006 at 4:17 am

I’m coming back, but for now i just wanted to post myself into the network that drew my eye to the page from the first word to the last on this discussion forum. I am a Bob Marley fanatic and i find it almost hard to listen to him anymore because of the overwhelming passion and pain in his lyrics. I am not referring to all of his songs, but the clear contenders containing expresions of his oppression are clear to all those who know Bob’s musical repertoire. I also wanted to comment on the poignancy and intellectual grounding of many of the previous points raised. Most people on this sight seem to be of a concious disposition.

’til soon


Anonymous Says:
January 21st, 2007 at 8:57 pm

is rastafarian a religion ? what about rastaman!!!!


Kieron Says:
February 16th, 2007 at 1:26 pm

A great initial post and some interesting following ones. Currently researching Bob Marley the ‘icon’ and your opinions have helped greatly. Not sure if any quotes from the page would be acceptable in an essay but if they are would appreciate being able to use them (just for uni not commercial use of course). bigLOVE K

         Feel Free       

feel free to quote from bol. all text is always available online. one love.

—kalamu
 


fay boi steve Says:
September 13th, 2007 at 3:14 pm

Bob marley is the best man in the world respect him or suk balls Bob R.I.P.BRAPPPPPPPPPPPPP


Brown Boy Blues : JahWorks.Org Says:
February 28th, 2012 at 7:19 pm

[…] 6) Mtume ya Salaam, Kalamu ya Salaam, Paul Roberts, et al., “The white-pothead appropriation of Bob Marley,” October 9, 2005; http://www.kalamu.com/bol/2005/10/09/bob-marley-the-wailers-%E2%80%9Crastaman-chant%E2%80%9D/ […]


bob marley pesta pantai Says:
June 9th, 2014 at 10:17 pm

I savor, cause I discovered exactly what I used to be looking for.
You have ended my 4 day lengthy hunt! God Bless you man.
Have a nice day. Bye


Leave a Reply



| top |