ONE of the stupidest and most ignorant words ever to come out of the mouth of an entertainer is when American comedian, Chris Rock, said that the recording by American rapper, Kanye West, titled by “My beautiful, dark, twisted fantasy” (MBDTF) is the best album ever made.
On reading that statement I think instantly of our Caribbean genius, Bob Marley. Chris Rock was about 10 years when Bob Marley’s genius swept the world. Knowing how chauvinistic the citizens of powerful countries are, I assume that when he was 15 in 1980, when Marley was at the apogee of his career, Rock probably dismissed reggae as some weird thing from the Third World.
I would not know if Rock ever listened to any of the five great albums of pop music of any era done by Marley- “Uprising,” “Rastaman Vibration,” Exodus,” “Survival,” and, “Kaya,” I know a tiny bit about music and feel assured in my opinion that West, if he lived 200 years, cannot birth an album that could match the phenomenal threads in those five albums.
Anyone who knows about music and knows about Bob Marley’s talent would find the utterance that “MBDTF” by Kanye West as the best album ever recorded is an insane utterance. Time Magazine has rated the album “Exodus” as one of the greatest pieces of music ever made and many people think that Exodus is not Marley’s best endeavour. I am one who holds that opinion.
None of West’s albums could come within a million of miles to Exodus. Will Smith once slapped Rock which the world disagreed with including me, but Rock should be careful when he is in Jamaica to ever talk about MBDTF being the greatest album ever made.
Marley’s genius is available on Amazon. And I could not miss the opportunity of the offer and you should not miss it too. Amazon is offering two box sets of 100 of Marley’s songs. The first box is 50 huge hits of the post 1970 Marley, the Marley that became famous and phenomenal after 1970. The second box set is 50 songs of Marley before he ever became famous in Jamaica much less the world. Post 1970 Marley is going at 27 American dollars. The early Marley is going at 13 American dollars.
There is a huge dichotomy of the two Marleys. The early Marley consists of songs in the genres of ska, rock steady and early reggae. The early Marley is about love songs; the presence of philosophy, politics and liberation are not there. How does one explain this dichotomy?
I think Marley’s genius and his philosophical radicalism were there waiting to emerge but the context was not there to nurture them. The anti-imperialist 70s provided the fertile field for Marley’s genius to grow. The anti-imperialist, post-colonial Third World was the match to light the Marley fire.
This was the era of the counter-culture in Europe and North America; the outbreak of revolution in Nicaragua, Iran, Ethiopia, Mozambique, Angola; radical anti-imperialist governments in Africa, particularly Tanzania and Algeria; the Arab oil embargo, the formation of the Non-Aligned Movement, the ubiquity of Fidel Castro’s charisma.
In Jamaica itself, Marley would have seen the brutalization of students who were protesting the expulsion of the Marxist historian of Guyana, Dr. Walter Rodney after Marley returned to Jamaica the same year after working as a labourer in a car factory. In Jamaica, Prime Minister, Michel Manley had a profound influence on Marley. Manley was not the showmanship in the Third World that Forbes Burnham was. But the Third World saw Manley in more positive ways than Burnham.
This had to do with the type of authoritarian politics that Burnham had embraced in Guyana. Manley did not have that negative image in the Third World. He was seen by the Third World as a more committed socialist than Burnham.
By the mid-1970s, Marley had taken to Manley and because of the mesmerising presence of Marley in Jamaica, the combination of the two led to an explosive reaction from certain Western countries.
The fear the West had of Guyana in the 1960, it had of Jamaica under Manley in the 1970s and together with Marley, provided an almost impregnable fortress. An assassination attempt was made on Marley’s life in 1976. One can assume that, by then, Marley’s music had become an anti-imperialist message to the entire post-colonial world.
In an interview to promote Marley’s biopic, his son Ziggly Marley said that he thought the CIA might have been involved in the attempted assassination. See my column of Tuesday, February 13, 2024, “The Marley assassination attempt and the Rodney assassination.” Music may not see another Marley for a generation to come.
DISCLAIMER: The views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Guyana National Newspapers Limited.
