Bob Marley’s Emancipate Yourself from Mental Slavery

guyana chronicle editorial

AS we celebrate Emancipation, Bob Marley’s well known quotation, “Emancipate Yourself from mental slavery,” is frequently invoked. The words come from one of his immortal songs, “Redemption Song.” Marley himself had borrowed those words from another Caribbean icon, Marcus Garvey, who uttered them as he rallied Blacks across the world to rise up and take their rightful place among the rest of humanity. In the process he sounded the warning that although the physical shackles of slavery were gone, the mental shackles were still prevalent and needed to be frontally addressed. That theme has remained a central aspect of the Black Nationalist discourse. That he was able to put it to song and in the process capture the sentiments of many millions of people of later generations speaks volumes about the special instincts of both Garvey and Marley. But who was Bob Marley? Bob Marley has to be located in the Caribbean Radical tradition, in particular its post-independence manifestations of Black Power and People’s Power. Bob Marley is to Reggae what Walter Rodney was to Caribbean Post independence Radical Intellectualism and Politics, what Vivian Richards was to West Indies Cricket and what the Mighty Sparrow is to Modern Calypso music. All of those persons were/are products of a particular moment in Caribbean history that I call the Radical Moment. To understand Marley’s music better, then, one has to interrogate it against the political socio-economic and cultural developments in the Caribbean from the 1940s to the 1980s. The contention is that the lyrics reflect the issues and perspectives of the era. Towards this end the essay interweaves Marley’s lyrics with the political developments of the period to give readers a better understanding of the two. Bob Marley was and still is the best known reggae singer to come out of Jamaica and the Caribbean. Many hail him as the” King of Reggae,” which suggests that he is the greatest reggae singer ever. Indeed, it was Marley who took reggae music to international audiences. His life was tragically cut short at the young age of 36, when he died of cancer. But he has become more famous in death. Succeeding generations recognise his music and lyrics, although he has been dead since 1981. This is quite rare, even for great artists. Marley’s popularity can be attributed to the range of his issues addressed by his music, which spoke and continues to speak to people across generations, issues, ideologies and, to some extent, race and class. His music and lyrics represent an uncompromising defense of the poor and the powerless and an affirmation of the dignity of the nation, race and country. He championed the cause of Black Liberation, but he did not seem to alienate non-Blacks. He sang primarily about life in Jamaica and the Caribbean, yet he penetrated the consciousness of people beyond the Caribbean with his message of brotherhood, sisterhood, love and righteousness.