Post by messenger on Feb 16, 2006 22:54:58 GMT -5
AT THE END of the latest verse deejay Tony Rebel has added to Sweet Jamaica, he asks 'How yu fi advertise Jamaica with a spliff inna Bob mouth/and if yu hol' a yout wid a spliff him gone a criminal court?'
It is a final question in a series of queries which slash to the heart of a society of double standards. It is a telling question as well, which I have seen ignite audiences at such disparate places (in more ways than one) and events as King's House, where Third World's Committed was held in late December, and the Port Kaiser Sports Club in St. Elizabeth, at the 13th Rebel Salute, held in mid-January.
Contained in that couplet, however, is the more than obvious irony of Jamaica's most famous face being slapped on a poster with a stick of weed in a further effort to lure tourists to all-inclusives, where security guards keep out the weed sellers. There is also the matter of Marley's appeal to foreigners and how this affects the behaviour of those who 'run tings'.
In all the noise about Marley's birthday, the 61st having just passed, I have never heard a government official say anything about the importance of the Gong without validating it from without. It invariably comes back to 'One Love' (which I still despise) being named Song of the Millennium by the BBC and 'Exodus' being honoured as album of the century by Time Magazine.
They see Marley as important to us because foreigners (and not any old foreigner now, but (gasp!) white people) see him as important. To explain the headline, as a country we dismember Bob Marley in memory, anything re Marley being linked to him as an entertainer, which he was not, moreso than an agent of social change.
SYMBOL OF SOCIAL CHANGE
In so doing, as a nation we 'dis' the man, with Rastafarianism and Haile Selassie being generally excluded from mention in high-up places. If I had never seen a picture of Bob Marley, I would never know that the man was a Rastaman, based on the glowing tributes emanating from politicians of various hues.
Singing (and he was not a very good one) is one thing, but Marley is a symbol of social change, genuine revolution which goes past posing as a rebel with a spliff tail. I can only imagine the furore it caused when Marley bought Island House from Chris Blackwell and moved in at 56 Hope Road, taking his Trench Town pals, locks and all, along with him for the regular football matches. Hope Road in the mid 1970s must have been the epitome of 'uptown' Jamaica and here comes this bastard bard, the only board he ever sat on being the one with a round hole at a pit toilet in Nine Miles, living among the well-to-do.
And to make it more scandalous, he was plucking at the heartstrings (and G-strings) of those nice, unblemished uptown girls. (Hey, maybe he was in a moment of missionary zeal when he wrote "Rasta deh pon top".).
We must remember that Blackwell was not the only 'boss' whom the employee Marley bought out. When he bought Federal Records on Marcus Garvey Drive in Kingston and made it Tuff Gong, it was the equivalent of, say, me buying The Gleaner. He invested in the basic resource of production for his business, an investment that is still paying off today and will for some time to come.
There is another one on display at the museum, now officially a protected heritage site. Marley's favourite performance outfit is there for all to see, narrow thighs, bell bottoms and all. In this era of 'bling' it is a clothed lesson in frugality, but many are not learning.
Music is going to teach them many a lesson but most, it seems, are still fascinated with how they look going to school rather than what they can learn.
(Dis)re(membering) Bob Marley
published: Thursday | February 9, 2006