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•RK: Community Books, wal gate. BOB MARLEY died one year ago. his legend and influence remain just as powertul in death as Here we re-print the tribute we published when he died by PAUL GILROY.
DESPITE the music has helped many a stuffy social find its feet and start dancing, will be many on the left who will balk at considering Bob Marley as more than a 'pop star'.
relevance of the autonomous politics of which Marley should be warned coverage of his death.
This went to ridiculous extremes to prove that his music and purposes were unrelated to bolitics and nothing to do with revolution.
Radio 4 informed us that Get up, stand up was a 'spiritual plea while the ATV tribute explained that Crazy Baldhead carried 'mystic message of peace and reconciliation' These views were a predictable insult to man whose political influence continues to gulde the political struggles of a generation reared on his instruction, 'Don't forget your history, control your destiny' Babylon during his fact that his militant there Any socialist who fails to see the black was part by the media revolution, whose flames were felt throughout Africa, West Europe Americas.
Marley preached
relentless imperialist doctrine. Built on Dread PanAfricanism, but unswerving commitment to the righteousness of the oppressed Babylon system sucked the sufferers, Marley's understanding of Babylon was to prove all too powerful, and far more materialist than metaphysical.
Direct intervention behamaican PMich ael behalf Michael Manley's People National Party got Marley he left Jamaica.
His commitment and priorities can be gauged from the fact that the Survival album, which marked his return to music, was resolutely more outspoken than ever, turning his own experience at the hands of the assassins into a symbol for the divide-andrule tactics of the capitalism that he despised. Millions of black people in the world who feel capitalist domination through racial oppression have taken up Marley's Garveyism and used in their struggles.
But they were his only constituency.
He had knack of presenting a. black experience undiluted in such a way that universal, general and class-based interpretations were also possible.
He invited while servicing black liberation. The calculated ambiguities of a song about politica violence Jamaica made relevant to England in a different way:
"They don't want to see us live together, All they want us to do is keep killing The impact of Afro-Caribbean culture in general and reggae in particular on the lives and politics of white working class youth in this country is too often overlooked. don white youth forever to the swelling ranks of the British Movement, must realise how many young people found something of their own In the language and symbols of Rastafarı which Marley made famous White young people flocked to see him per. form and bayed stana up for your rights' back at the stage in their cup final atmosphere relationship flowered briefly in the cooperation of black and white which marked the early days of Against and prepared the ground for the shortlived but important 'two-tone' craze.
Marley's influence powered over all this and the connections he fought to reveal will be harder to uncover the next time becomes fashionable.
Of course, his rise to stardom was only possible once the leisure industry woke up to the vast protits to be made reggae.
Third
markets for records in Africa and Latin America demanded new products and the domestic 'rock scene' had grown stale the deadweight The image primitive and licentious herbsman was to prove a novel selling point to the fans who gasped over No Woman, No Cry. In this period many people were tempted to think that Marley had ababdoned our cause in the cynical pursuit of fame and fortune.
He accepted the constraints of commodity stardom as the price of access to larger numbers of people who could make his vision of the internationalisation of Rastafari a reality. Irony The move ANOV C away root reggae towards pop, willcl started Natty Dread — his first album atter the original Wailers broke up should be understood as a strategic ploy to open up black America to the political culture of reggae and Rastfari.
It is sad irony that he should have fallen ill just as Stevie Wonder's Master Blaster seemed to have made this con. quest likely.
Don't be fooled into thinking that Bob Marley was a mystic just because he spoke a language of class struggle which you find difficult to translate He spanned political and cultural traditions, and the dif ferential effects of his and third world present precise picture of the contigurations of imperialism His music and political achievements are the best obituary. Listen to Burning and Looting and remember him serenading Zimbabwe into Independence.
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