Free Bob Marley!

[Lycaon]

http://www.slate.com/id/2135672/

 

Free Bob Marley!

He's been hijacked by stoned suburban teenagers.

By Field Maloney

Posted Wednesday, Feb. 22, 2006, at 3:48 PM ET

 

 

 

Bob Marley's greatest-hits album, Legend, came out in 1984, three years after his death, at 36, of a cancer that spread from his big toe. It's one of the best-selling albums of all time, in the company of Michael Jackson's Thriller and Bruce Springsteen's Born in the U.S.A. During his lifetime, Marley's following outside Jamaica was mostly cultish and underground until his last years, when he acquired a modest international stardom. But Marley didn't really become a mainstream fixture—a singer instantly recognizable to anyone who's lingered over a fajita at Chili's or wandered through a freshman quad in the springtime—until after his death, and after Legend. Greatest-hits collections are notoriously bad showcases, but Legend was a doozy—a defanged and overproduced selection of Marley's music. Listening to Legend to understand Marley is like reading Bridget Jones's Diary to get Jane Austen.

 

Marley has had an astonishingly successful commercial afterlife—the booming sales of his catalog virtually created the world-beat music category, paving the way for countless Buena Vista Social Clubs and Gipsy Kings—but his artistic reputation may never recover from it. His musical legacy has been hijacked and simplified by his cheesier fans (all those trustafarians toking in his memory). In turn, the music cognoscenti and hipsters seem to hold his mainstream appeal and lame followers against him. The fact that Marley is known by his weaker recordings like Legend or Exodus (which Time magazine—bizarrely to anyone familiar with the Marley canon—named "album of the century") doesn't help his cause.

 

Bob Marley's golden period was the three albums he cut with the original Wailers and the brilliant, certifiably insane, Jamaican producer Lee "Scratch" Perry: Soul Rebels, African Herbsman, and Rasta Revolution. These records are more satisfyingly complex, both lyrically and instrumentally, than much of Marley's later work. The Perry recordings are steeped in R & B and soul harmonies, but also tough. (Marley's earliest British fans were punk rockers.) The albums' layered rhythms—trancelike and jolting, like reggae by gunfighters—anticipated dub music and later stars like King Tubby and Augustus Pablo. When the English producer Chris Blackwell took over in 1973, intent on making Marley a star, the music, despite a couple of great albums, notably Catch a Fire! and Natty Dread, became steadily more mellow and digestible. (To hear the difference, listen to "Mr. Brown from 1970 and "Natural Mystic" from 1977.)

 

Perhaps Marley can't be taken seriously in a self-conscious age—unlike Dylan, or even Lennon, Marley didn't cloak himself in protective irony—but that risks overlooking how sly the man was. (Once, when asked how he handled fame, Marley responded, "I handle fame by not being famous … I'm not famous to me.") Since Marley would have been 61 this month, it's a fitting time to ask: Can Marley's legacy emancipate itself from an American following that wants a multiculti teddy bear?

 

Rachel Saurer, in a smart piece on the 20th anniversary of Legend, sketched out the loose set of values that Marley has come to embody: "In the realm of musical-taste-as-statement-of-personal-identity, Legend says this: I generally care about world events. I favor cotton clothing. I think stress is bad. I want to stop injustice. I'm all for love. I wouldn't say no to the herb, if you get my drift."

 

But if Marley's fans are cheesy and annoying, at least in this country, so are Pablo Neruda's, and no one holds that against him. How can we grudge Bob the feel-good party boys and mountain-biking philosophy majors who cling to his memory?

 

After all, Marley is an international star with a strong following in the Third World, especially in Africa. There, Marley fandom has a different dimension. Say you're a middle-class American white kid. It's spring term freshman year, and you've just discovered pot, Bob Marley, and ultimate frisbee. You really want to drop that organic chemistry course, but you know your parents will be pissed. In such a scenario, Bob Marley's songs, with lines like "Emancipate yourself from mental slavery" and "No chains are on my feet/ but I am not free," seem to be talking to you in a way that's deeply profound. Sure, that's laughable. But let's take a different scenario altogether. What if you're black? Or from the Third World? Then the lyrics take on a lot more historical force and contemporary urgency.

 

The problem with Bob Marley in white America is one of perspective. Many of Marley's songs are about resistance and violent revolution. The threat implicit in the lines "Them belly full but we hungry/ A hungry mob is an angry mob" or the song "Burnin' and Lootin' " isn't too far from the surface. But lyrics about armed resistance make America's secular-progressive middle classes—those most responsible for the cult of Marley as a cuddly "One Love" Rastafarian—uneasy. And so does Bible-beating. Marley's music is steeped in the Old Testament, especially the Song of Solomon. Marley sings in "Small Axe":

 

Why boasteth thyself, O evil men;

Playing smart and not being clever?

I said, you're working iniquity

To achieve vanity …

 

And whosoever diggeth a pit

Shall fall in it; bury in it

And whosoever diggeth a pit

Shall bury in it; bury in it.

 

Here, he's plundering from at least four books of the Bible: Psalms 52:1 and 94:4; Proverbs 22:8; Isaiah 59:4; and Jeremiah 2:5.

 

Often in Marley, militancy and religion are fused in a way that wouldn't please, say, Pat Robertson. Sometimes, the fusing is literal, as in this line of wordplay on "revolution" and "revelation": "Revelation, reveals the truth, revelation/ It takes a revolution to make a solution." Other times, the relationship between religion and resistance is more ambivalent, and menacing: "Cause I feel like bombing a church/ Now that you know that the preacher is lying."

 

Bob Marley crossed over because he wanted to be heard. But even when he sounded a peaceful note, there was an edge in his voice. He once told a reporter, "There should be no war between black and white. But until white people listen to black with open ears, there must be—well, suspicion!" As it turns out, Marley had every reason to be suspicious about how he'd be listened to. One love, mon.

 

Field Maloney is on the editorial staff of The New Yorker.

 

Article URL: http://www.slate.com/id/2135672/

 

Go to the article for pictures and song samples.

[The NZA]

While the same can be said for numerous artists, its true - every dorm i went to, bam, scarface poster, something painted by dali (sp), and marley, usually something clever like his hair was growing into weed.

[Reverend Jax]

Ugh, I've gotten so tired of music snobbery. I watch High Fidelity now and think "What are these guys hoping will come out of such over-analysed self-important hate." Honestly, who gives a fuck who else likes the music or artist you do? How cares if they like it for different reasons than you do? Who cares if Marley got mellower in his later years. He got older. Everyone does. It's not like mellow music has no place and it's not like an artist changing their sound means they got bad. Do people honestly think they will be more highly revered if they hate all music that's popular and only approve of unknown artists, or known artists' earlier work? Has every popular artist let you down personaly? Oh boo fucking whoo! This type of music snobbery (which I'll admit to falling prey to in my younger days) is so self-important and pompus, it honesly makes me feel bad for all musicians.

 

Can't people just talk about the music without trying to out-hate and out-snob each other? I was listening to that band way before anyone else was, and I start thinking that band was stale way before anyone else even heard of them!

 

Tuh!

[Lycaon]

I just thought it was kind of amusing, though the stereotype is certainly there.

[Jont]

Ugh, I've gotten so tired of music snobbery. I watch High Fidelity now and think "What are these guys hoping will come out of such over-analysed self-important hate." Honestly, who gives a fuck who else likes the music or artist you do? How cares if they like it for different reasons than you do? Who cares if Marley got mellower in his later years. He got older. Everyone does. It's not like mellow music has no place and it's not like an artist changing their sound means they got bad. Do people honestly think they will be more highly revered if they hate all music that's popular and only approve of unknown artists, or known artists' earlier work? Has every popular artist let you down personaly? Oh boo fucking whoo! This type of music snobbery (which I'll admit to falling prey to in my younger days) is so self-important and pompus, it honesly makes me feel bad for all musicians.

 

Can't people just talk about the music without trying to out-hate and out-snob each other? I was listening to that band way before anyone else was, and I start thinking that band was stale way before anyone else even heard of them!

 

Tuh!

 

Ok, fucking say what you want, it's still every man's destiny to punch Linkin Park fans. And Emo kids. If there is a difference.

[The NZA]

Fuck jax, i tried to have this conversation last week.

[Reverend Jax]

I read your thread. I didn't have anything to say about it at the time, but this article really pissed me off. I guess what set me off about it was that it wasn't just self-important utter hate. It was what passes for music journalism.

[Ganny McVagflaps]

Ok, fucking say what you want, it's still every man's destiny to punch Linkin Park fans. And Emo kids. If there is a difference.

 

I second the motion and raise you any nu-metal. Screw you Jax, I'm going punchin' with Jont.

[Thrizzle]

What do you have to say about this thread, Lonely Island?

 

Jahhhhh! Rastafarianism

Yes I, Ras Trent

Bada-ding-ding-ding-ding WHOAHHHH~!

Who demmmmm?

You no want test, me champion sound

 

Oh fire 'pon Babylon (Babylon)

And fire 'pon a batty boy (batty boy, batty boy)

Rudebwoy livin in the shanty dorms

My roommate Nick is an ignorant baldhead!

Now chant down Babylon, midterm essays

Then puff from de chalice I fi make from a Sprite can

Last week I read a book about Selassie I

Then told my bumba claat parents I was switching religions

Excuse I! Oh hot stepper

You do so many dutty crimes (Nyabinghi!)

And plus you're fully skylarking all the time

Udda look ya now

 

Have you ever noticed, how baldheads suck?

Bada-ding-ding-ding-ding-dong-ding-ding-dong DUCK

Excuse I for my skanking, give thanks and praise

Me toil part time at jah Cold Stone Creamery

 

In a dub style!

Roller skates

A DVD of "Cool Runnings"

"Murder She Wrote"

Yagga-yagga-yagga yowwww!

 

Are you there Jah? It's me, Ras Trent

Are you there Jah? It's me, Ras Trent

 

Are you there Jah? It's me, Ras Trent

Please guide me 'pon your bike path of righteousness

Oh stanahoy, stanahoy, stanahoy, stanahoy Jaaaah!

Fussing and fighting and Zion and roots

Red Stripe, Shabba, ragamuffin and culture

Me night nurse never want to plant de corn

Skiddily WHOAHHH!

Diddily, skittily, bittily bittly WHOAHHH!