| Charles E Campbell Sunday, May 14, 2006 |
This week, I want to take the time out to honour the memory of Bob Marley noting the day he departed from this world 25 years ago. It would be remiss of me not to also honour my father, Alfred Campbell - an Anglican priest who also coincidentally died on May 11th, a year ago today.
Both these men were missionaries in their own right; products of two consecutive generations deeply influenced by Jamaican cultural impulses.
Bob did his first recording, the admonitory Judge Not, in 1959. Despite this early attempt, he failed to connect with that critical mass until the period of 1964-1966, when The Wailers became sound system kings. In Jamaica, they recorded over 100 tracks for Coxsone Dodd's Studio One music outfit, including covers of the Beatles, Bob Dylan and Tom Jones. During one week in particular, they had five of the top 10 songs on the local hit parade.
Between 1968 and 1972, while signed to the American duo of Johnny Nash and Danny Simms, Bob Marley and The Wailers covered hits by American artistes like The Archies, The Box Tops and James Brown. In Jamaica, 1968 was a watershed year. When the Rastafarian and the American-borne Black Power movements converged and erupted in the Rodney Riots, the main lyrical content of our music was forever changed.
Bob, Bunny and Peter were also going through their own private transformation; from accepting the tenets of Rastafari to changing producers and working with Lee 'Scratch' Perry and his Upsetters band, who produced the albums, Soul Rebel, African Herbsman and Rasta Revolution.
In 1972, now signed to Chris Blackwell's Island Records, the Wailers released the classic Catch A Fire album, and quickly followed it up with Burnin'. Unfortunately, this also precipitated the split-up of the band.
Aston 'Family Man' Barrett and Tyrone Downie were now the main musicians responsible for the arrangements of the Wailers Band.
When compared with Bob's earlier works, it is not hard to detect changes in the music's structure; Downie introduced synthesisers, strings and extra guitar parts. Back at home, our complaints were that the music was being watered down. On the international circuit, however, to quote Roger Steffens, "The two Island LPs had garnered ecstatic press, particularly in Britain. The British tours and TV dates showed a receptive and excitable audience, hungry for the Wailers' new brand of 'international style' Reggae."
[Bob Marley, Spirit Dancer - Bruce W Talamon, 1994]
Today, we hear a reprise of that parochial tendency in relation to Sean Paul and the new genre called Reggaeton or Spanish Reggae.
In 1974, the I-Threes joined Bob Marley and the Wailers on what is still considered his most riveting and revolutionary work, Natty Dread.
Bob had begun maturing in his newly adopted religion and now saw the world through the eyes of his Rastafari philosophy. The album comprised chilling, tauntingly angry lyrics on tracks like, Dem Belly Full (But We Hungry), Rebel Music, Talking Blues, Revolution and No Woman No Cry.
In 1975, Eric Clapton's cover of I Shot The Sheriff rocketed to the number one position on the American charts and Bob's concert tours of Europe and the US were now filling large venues and concert halls. Bob's stage demeanour was no longer playful and flirtatious - he had become a shaman.
Rastaman Vibration, released in 1976, became Bob's only top-10 hit in America. I pause at this point of the chronology to remind us of the still visible scars of political tribalism which plagues Jamaica to this day.
At this time, Bob - under 'nuff' pressure from associates like myself - conceded to doing the Smile Jamaica concert, as a consequence of which Bob, his wife Rita and manager Don Taylor were shot by 'unknown assailants'. The world has it that these perpetrators went unpunished, but Jamaican folklore tells a different tale, including a death, execution-style, sometime later in McGregor Gully, East Kingston.
In 1988, post-Peter Tosh's death, I was in Cameroon organising our first West African Reggae Sunsplash tour and boasting of the great Black heroes of the West who advocated for the liberation and development of the African continent. An African stopped me dead in my tracks with the comment, "But in Africa, we do not shoot our heroes".
That night in 1976, at Heroes Park, Bob's lyrics, One good thing about music/when it hits you feel no pain had new meaning. He went even further, Puss and dog, dem get together/why can't we love one another.
Flash forward to January 10, 1978, five days after the Green Bay Massacre - a pair of enemy gun men, Claudie Massop (JLP) and Aston Thompson, aka Bucky Marshall (PNP), negotiated a 'spontaneous' truce as a response to the clear signal sent by the State security forces. They planned a concert to celebrate the peace treaty and convinced Manley and Seaga to appear, but they needed someone above the political fray to symbolise the armistice. They flew to London and met with Bob, who again answered his people's call.
Bob took the stage shortly after midnight. That night is one from which many stories and myths have been spun. One report says that at 12:09 am, two 20-second earthquakes occurred. What is sure is that in the audience at the National Stadium were people who had not shared the same the same breathing space for over four years. It was the 12th anniversary of Haile Selassie I's visit to Jamaica.
As he ended his set with Jammin', Bob called for "the two leading people of this land to come up here and shake hands, show the people that you are gonna unite, show the people that you love 'em right". The significant gesture of Seaga and Manley together with their hands clasped over Bob's head is indelibly inked in our memory and our history.
That's the stuff of which heroes are made. In the right place, at the right time and for ever more through this single act - more than any other - Bob Marley became Jamaica's national hero, a symbol of peace and 'One Love'. He united the nation through music. In June 1979, two years before his untimely death, Bob was awarded a United Nations medal for peace.
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