Redemption Song: Easter, Freedom and Bob Marley

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Toyin Falola

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Apr 12, 2020, 10:04:57 AM4/12/20
to dialogue, Yoruba Affairs

Gloria Emeagwali

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Apr 13, 2020, 4:08:41 PM4/13/20
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For some of us, the most important part of Bob Marley’s Redemption  Song  was the call to “emancipate  yourselves from mental slavery.”

Then there is the interesting verse:
 
“How long shall they kill our prophets while we stand aside and look?
Yes some say it’s just a part of it
We’ve got to fulfill the book.”

The above can be interpreted in many ways. Is this a criticism of those who say “it’s just a part of it, we’ve got to fulfill the book”  or  is it an endorsement?

For decades I chose the former and took it as a critique. 

Are songs of freedom synonymous with redemption songs?Who is redeeming whom or what? Recall that the song started with the line, “Old pirates, yes they rob I ........”

Did he sing this song during  Easter or is this editorially modified to suit the occasion.

When Bob Marley sang  “no woman no cry” editorial opportunists used it to say that women are the source of pain  but Bob simply meant, “no, my love, don’t cry.”

GE

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Harrow, Kenneth

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Apr 14, 2020, 11:56:16 AM4/14/20
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who is the "they" in the verse, gloria; who is the "we'? and doesn't the answer, shouldn't the answer, change over time? when he wrote it, he had an audience in mind, who understood the reference. but think how circumstances have changed over time, and that's where the politics of oppression matters, in reading our circumstances and deciding what is just or not, what needs changing or not.
i'm thinking of the Occupy movement, which responded to the power of financial institutions--not corporations like walmart, not western govts. i'm thinking of the EU vs france as a factor in african development and the relations between european national govts, at the time of colonialism, then neocolonialism, then postcolonial times, and now globalization. how irrelevant the national liberation politics of the 50s and 60s turned when authoritarian dictatorships assumed power, and how irrelevant the political mobilization points of the past are with china  the primary investor in the continent, on how the debates over buhari have nothing to do with the west being in charge. what i mean is, no one really raises that in the endless debates over the north vs the south in nigeria.
the world changed, and "we" and "they" have changed. how can we read those pronouns today, while we continue to love marley's force of resistance?
ken

kenneth harrow

professor emeritus

dept of english

michigan state university

517 803-8839

har...@msu.edu


From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Gloria Emeagwali <gloria.e...@gmail.com>
Sent: Monday, April 13, 2020 4:06 PM
To: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Redemption Song: Easter, Freedom and Bob Marley
 

Gloria Emeagwali

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Apr 14, 2020, 12:13:42 PM4/14/20
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I  was actually thinking of asking you for your interpretation of  “ some say it’s just a part of it..” 

Your point is noted. You are saying that there is flexibility and fluidity in interpretation. So It is not about what the author meant but how we interpret it.


Harrow, Kenneth

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Apr 14, 2020, 1:00:08 PM4/14/20
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a quick reflection. i grabbed this from wiki. the redemption song was 1980. what was happening in jamaica then? manley's 8 years term as president ending, and the marley one love concert still  echoing in the hills:

The One Love Peace Concert was a large concert held in Kingston on April 22, 1978, during a time of political civil war in Jamaica between opposing parties Jamaican Labour Party and the People's National Party. The concert came to its peak during Bob Marley & The Wailers' performance of "Jammin'", when Marley joined the hands of political rivals Michael Manley (PNP) and Edward Seaga (JLP).

they had to be the landowners, the wealthy club owners, the american interests, the wealthy capitalists. no? we the "people"--the socialists under manley
ken

kenneth harrow

professor emeritus

dept of english

michigan state university

517 803-8839

har...@msu.edu


Sent: Tuesday, April 14, 2020 12:09 PM

Biko Agozino

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Apr 14, 2020, 1:15:11 PM4/14/20
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Why did Bob Marley avoid stepping foot in Nigeria?

I was told that people with his complexion are called Ibbo Red in Jamaica. He developed his consciousness during the genocidal war in Biafra when African intellectuals justified the use of starvation as a legitimate weapon of war against Jah children who never did them any wrong. Is it possible to read the lyrics of Marley as solidarity with his fellow Igbo? Most of those songs came out within a few years of the end of the genocidal war. Listen again to 'Cheer Up My Brother, 1972; Survival, 1979; War and even Redemption Song, 1980. 

A similar theme of Happy Survival is discernible in Igbo Highlife Music and international stars like John Lennon and Jimi Hendrix expressed their solidarity during the war. I would be surprised if Marley saw all those pictures of Biafra Babies but did not reflect them in his lyrics at a time that Fela later confessed that he was seduced with some 'bread' to sing about One Nigeria during the war but later realized that the Igbo had a right to self-determination. 

What did Commander Ebenezer Obey mean with the lyrics of 'Member of Board of Directors' at a time that the sale of shares in foreign companies was done by Awo as Finance Minister in 1972 while the life-savings of the Igbo were seized in exchange for 20 pounds per family? Is there a Yoruba or Hausa song in sympathy with the sufferings of their Igbo brothers and sisters comparable to the sympathetic texts of Soyinka echoed in the works of Walter Rodney and in Marley's lyrics? 

See the reference to the war against the Igbo as not being a tribal war, according to Rodney in HEUA because, according to him, there is no such African tribe as Shell BP or the British Labor Party Government, and before colonialism, the Igbo neighbors never ganged up against them to commit genocide. See also the only contribution to the journal of the Historical Society of Nigeria by Rodney in 1971 and you may understand his parable of the resistance against 'Locusts': https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/41856881.pdf

Gloria is right that working in American or British universities is part of the struggle for what I call reparative justice, a term that Caribbean countries adopted in their law-suit against European enslaving nations. Those universities were set up for white men only at a time that it was illegal for Africans to be taught to read and write. Glasgow university recently admitted that it benefited from the wealth of those who enslaved Africans and offered to pay the University of the West Indies $10m as part of the contributions to reparative justice (I hope that the UWI will share some of it with African Universities and with Historically Black Universities in the US). 

While we support excellent historically black universities like Du Bois, we cannot surrender our hard-won places in spaces built with African labor and wealth or feel that they are doing us a favor by letting us in (if it was up to some, we would remain excluded from those places). Our presence has improved the quality of higher education internationally by contributing the important paradigm of Afrocentricity (not Afrocentrism) to open the doors for other interdisciplinary studies that followed the success of Black Studies. 

Biko

OLAYINKA AGBETUYI

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Apr 14, 2020, 3:11:29 PM4/14/20
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Addendum.

Let me say again:

Military governments dont ask intellectuals whether starvation is a legitimate weapon of war.

A military government knows full well they are illegitimate so the question of asking for a legitimate means for doing things does not arise:  they impose their will on the populace at the barrel of the gun.

OAA



Sent from my Samsung Galaxy smartphone.


-------- Original message --------
From: 'Biko Agozino' via USA Africa Dialogue Series <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Date: 14/04/2020 18:17 (GMT+00:00)
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Redemption Song: Easter, Freedom andBob  Marley

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Why did Bob Marley avoid stepping foot in Nigeria?

I was told that people with his complexion are called Ibbo Red in Jamaica. He developed his consciousness during the genocidal war in Biafra when African intellectuals justified the use of starvation as a legitimate weapon of war against Jah children who never did them any wrong. Is it possible to read the lyrics of Marley as solidarity with his fellow Igbo? Most of those songs came out within a few years of the end of the genocidal war. Listen again to 'Cheer Up My Brother, 1972; Survival, 1979; War and even Redemption Song, 1980. 

A similar theme of Happy Survival is discernible in Igbo Highlife Music and international stars like John Lennon and Jimi Hendrix expressed their solidarity during the war. I would be surprised if Marley saw all those pictures of Biafra Babies but did not reflect them in his lyrics at a time that Fela later confessed that he was seduced with some 'bread' to sing about One Nigeria during the war but later realized that the Igbo had a right to self-determination. 

What did Commander Ebenezer Obey mean with the lyrics of 'Member of Board of Directors' at a time that the sale of shares in foreign companies was done by Awo as Finance Minister in 1972 while the life-savings of the Igbo were seized in exchange for 20 pounds per family? Is there a Yoruba or Hausa song in sympathy with the sufferings of their Igbo brothers and sisters comparable to the sympathetic texts of Soyinka echoed in the works of Walter Rodney and in Marley's lyrics? 

See the reference to the war against the Igbo as not being a tribal war, according to Rodney in HEUA because, according to him, there is no such African tribe as Shell BP or the British Labor Party Government, and before colonialism, the Igbo neighbors never ganged up against them to commit genocide. See also the only contribution to the journal of the Historical Society of Nigeria by Rodney in 1971 and you may understand his parable of the resistance against 'Locusts': https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/41856881.pdf

Gloria is right that working in American or British universities is part of the struggle for what I call reparative justice, a term that Caribbean countries adopted in their law-suit against European enslaving nations. Those universities were set up for white men only at a time that it was illegal for Africans to be taught to read and write. Glasgow university recently admitted that it benefited from the wealth of those who enslaved Africans and offered to pay the University of the West Indies $10m as part of the contributions to reparative justice (I hope that the UWI will share some of it with African Universities and with Historically Black Universities in the US). 

While we support excellent historically black universities like Du Bois, we cannot surrender our hard-won places in spaces built with African labor and wealth or feel that they are doing us a favor by letting us in (if it was up to some, we would remain excluded from those places). Our presence has improved the quality of higher education internationally by contributing the important paradigm of Afrocentricity (not Afrocentrism) to open the doors for other interdisciplinary studies that followed the success of Black Studies. 

Biko

On Tuesday, 14 April 2020, 12:13:42 GMT-4, Gloria Emeagwali <gloria.e...@gmail.com> wrote:


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OLAYINKA AGBETUYI

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Apr 14, 2020, 3:12:14 PM4/14/20
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Bob Marley's lyrics were in part in solidarity with his brethren in the southern part of Africa.

He was more concerned with liberation and majority rule.  He was not concerned with his Igbo brethren because Nigeria had attained majority rule and he considered Nigeria's problem identical to Jamaica's in several ways:  teething problems.

I have no doubt if he lived longer Nigeria would have been on the cards given his teeming fans there.

OAA



Sent from my Samsung Galaxy smartphone.


-------- Original message --------
From: 'Biko Agozino' via USA Africa Dialogue Series <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Date: 14/04/2020 18:17 (GMT+00:00)
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Redemption Song: Easter, Freedom andBob  Marley

Boxbe This message is eligible for Automatic Cleanup! (usaafric...@googlegroups.com) Add cleanup rule | More info
Why did Bob Marley avoid stepping foot in Nigeria?

I was told that people with his complexion are called Ibbo Red in Jamaica. He developed his consciousness during the genocidal war in Biafra when African intellectuals justified the use of starvation as a legitimate weapon of war against Jah children who never did them any wrong. Is it possible to read the lyrics of Marley as solidarity with his fellow Igbo? Most of those songs came out within a few years of the end of the genocidal war. Listen again to 'Cheer Up My Brother, 1972; Survival, 1979; War and even Redemption Song, 1980. 

A similar theme of Happy Survival is discernible in Igbo Highlife Music and international stars like John Lennon and Jimi Hendrix expressed their solidarity during the war. I would be surprised if Marley saw all those pictures of Biafra Babies but did not reflect them in his lyrics at a time that Fela later confessed that he was seduced with some 'bread' to sing about One Nigeria during the war but later realized that the Igbo had a right to self-determination. 

What did Commander Ebenezer Obey mean with the lyrics of 'Member of Board of Directors' at a time that the sale of shares in foreign companies was done by Awo as Finance Minister in 1972 while the life-savings of the Igbo were seized in exchange for 20 pounds per family? Is there a Yoruba or Hausa song in sympathy with the sufferings of their Igbo brothers and sisters comparable to the sympathetic texts of Soyinka echoed in the works of Walter Rodney and in Marley's lyrics? 

See the reference to the war against the Igbo as not being a tribal war, according to Rodney in HEUA because, according to him, there is no such African tribe as Shell BP or the British Labor Party Government, and before colonialism, the Igbo neighbors never ganged up against them to commit genocide. See also the only contribution to the journal of the Historical Society of Nigeria by Rodney in 1971 and you may understand his parable of the resistance against 'Locusts': https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/41856881.pdf

Gloria is right that working in American or British universities is part of the struggle for what I call reparative justice, a term that Caribbean countries adopted in their law-suit against European enslaving nations. Those universities were set up for white men only at a time that it was illegal for Africans to be taught to read and write. Glasgow university recently admitted that it benefited from the wealth of those who enslaved Africans and offered to pay the University of the West Indies $10m as part of the contributions to reparative justice (I hope that the UWI will share some of it with African Universities and with Historically Black Universities in the US). 

While we support excellent historically black universities like Du Bois, we cannot surrender our hard-won places in spaces built with African labor and wealth or feel that they are doing us a favor by letting us in (if it was up to some, we would remain excluded from those places). Our presence has improved the quality of higher education internationally by contributing the important paradigm of Afrocentricity (not Afrocentrism) to open the doors for other interdisciplinary studies that followed the success of Black Studies. 

Biko

On Tuesday, 14 April 2020, 12:13:42 GMT-4, Gloria Emeagwali <gloria.e...@gmail.com> wrote:


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Obiora IKE

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Apr 14, 2020, 5:32:03 PM4/14/20
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Sorry brother Agbetuyi. You are wrong.  

History books are filled with military authorities depending for technical, economic, political and military advice from their populations, especially intellectuals. 

No government in whichever shape or form can work in a vacuum or alone, not even military governments as we have had Nigeria. Ask IBB for example. 

Military people ask intellectuals for advice. 
And they use such advise as this is sometimes a basis for legitimising their actions. 

There are of course cases where the military impose their will with the  barrel of the gun on the populace.  

The starvation of children in Biafra was an advice given to the military government by civilians, intellectuals and political advisors from  1967/68 to 1970 to use.  

The purpose was to  end the self determination efforts of eastern Nigeria- Biafra - from the rest of the country and the innocent children who died were considered victims of wartime.

Some of those who participated are still alive both covilians, intellectuals and the military.  One may not not need to sacrifice the truth or integrity to beg this question.  Not on this subject please. 

Obiora Ike
Geneva

Gloria Emeagwali

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Apr 14, 2020, 5:32:11 PM4/14/20
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I agree with OA on this. Marley’s major focus was Zimbabwe and South Africa.

GE

Cornelius Hamelberg

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Apr 14, 2020, 7:24:52 PM4/14/20
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Hallelujah!  Here’s someone chilling in his backyard (Easter vibes)

The very first thing that we have to get clear is what the Rastafari mean by Babylon, so that we don’t conflate it with other more exact/ exacting definitions of Babylon,  as we are likely to do when we sing “ Rivers of Babylon.”;  or other confusions about  the frequent references to  “ The Twelve Tribes of Israel”  - an organisation to which I belonged  in 1985, as a member of the Tribe of Judah.

Hear Burning Spear shouting here in Christopher Columbus: Twelve Tribes of Israel!

For good measure, I expect our honorary Nigerian Jamaican Professor of Philosophy, Dr. John Ayotunde (Tunde) Isola Bewaji , to join in the fray.

As a reggae connoisseur who is also interested in African-Caribbean history and identities, I don’t know to what extent Professor Kenneth Harrow views himself as a baldhead or a fellow rebel, nevertheless I should like to come down heavily on his side at this stage of the discussion, in support of his position about the shifting sands of time and how evanescent the identities and definitions of  “they” and ”them” can be, even as the values that control those definitions remain constant. The most humble example that I can think of at the moment is what John Kerry once said: “I don’t want to claim that God is on our side. As Abraham Lincoln told us, I want to pray humbly that we are on God’s side.”

Bob Marley didn’t live in a vacuum; his very existence and his fame cannot be separated from the context in which he was born and lived on. His Redemption Song is latecomer to the show and was one of the very last songs he composed and sang from his sickbed, more or less as a last will and testament: “Won’t you help me sing, these songs of Freedom?”

The long history of slavery and piracy is a constant theme in Reggae music. “Pirates” is always them and they, i.e. the enemy. So we have Peter Tosh, singing, “I saw World War II when the pirates came right through” and in “ Stand firm” –  we hear Tosh protesting,

“Then the parson tell I say

Then the parson tell I say

If I want to be pure within

I've got to come confess my sins

Another pirate

Another pirate I say”

Who is the  “we“  and who is the “ them” in Bob Marley’s  “ We and Them” – that was released in the same album, “ Uprising”?

In some of his songs, there is both a local We and a local Them in the Jamaican context, in which there is and has always been some degree of political infighting in that country, some people are we and some are “them”, as in “Them belly full but we hungry”. The "them" and we transcend confinement in a Jamaican locality, to the extent that that was the song we heard blaring from the loudspeakers of the opposition party vans, the NPP and NPN and even Fela’s MOP (Movement of the People) in Port Harcourt, during the Nigerian presidential elections in 1983.

Bob Marley defines the “we” very sharply in Get up, Stand Up  (for your rights) and in “So much things to say”,  where he says

“So, don't you forget (no way) your youth

Who you are and where you stand in the struggle”

We all remember How Bob Marley brought Jamaica’s the opposing party leaders, the  JLP’s Edward Seaga and the PNP’s Michael Manley, together in that historic One Love Peace Concert On 22nd April 1978.

 (To be continued)


Cornelius Hamelberg

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Apr 14, 2020, 9:16:52 PM4/14/20
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It’s important, no rush, and it doesn’t have to be covered in a slipshod manner.

 The Hebrew prophetic cannon officially closed with Malachi , about  458 before Jesus was born, but I don’t think that Oga Falola conveniently glorifying Bob Marley as a “ Prophet” should cause any offence to the Jewish Authorities  , as long as Marley is not proclaimed a Hebrew Prophet. Unlike the Muslims, the Jewish Authorities don’t even countenance Jesus of Nazareth as a “ Prophet”, of Isreal, let alone their Messiah.  However,  referring to Bob  Marley as a Prophet could irritate  many a Muslim fundamentalist or not so fundamentalist, since the shahada proclaims Muhammad ( S.A.W.) is the Last Prophet or the Seal of the Prophets and in his last sermon he himself proclaimed, “ No prophet will come after me.” Oga falola, of course, means prophet in a less theological sense,  more in tune with Allen Ginsberg’s definition of a prophet as one  who ( like William Blake) looks into his heart and speaks, or to quote Sir Philip Sidney "Fool," said my Muse to me, "Look in thy heart and write.”

 When he asks in his Redemption Song,

“How long shall they kill our prophets

While we stand aside and look?”

The list is long – elsewhere he has told us,

“I'll never forget no way

They crucified Jesus Christ

I'll never forget, no way

They stole Marcus Garvey for rights ho-ooh!

I'll never forget, no way

They turned their back on Paul Bogle

Hey! So don't you forget (no way) your youth

Who you are and where you stand in the struggle”

With the many conspiracy theories surrounding his death, he may have also been subtly referring to himself and including himself in the prophetic category. There are also a number of conspiracy theories about the death of pop’s greatest guitarist, Jimi Hendrix.

Some background to understanding Robert Nesta Marley

Pivotal:  Marcus Garvey and what is Black Zionism

 Also very important :  What the Rastafari mean by Zion

And in Exodus, what Bob Marley could have meant by

“Oh, well, well, well

Open your heart, uh!

And look within

Are you satisfied

With the life you're living?

We know where we're going

We know where we're from

We're leaving Babylon

We're going to the Father's land

In this exodus

Movement of Jah people”

 ( To be continued) 

Cornelius Hamelberg

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Apr 15, 2020, 3:19:18 AM4/15/20
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So Jah seh

It’s a long list of seers and prophets of Africa and Diaspora, from Luqman to our more liberal  anointments of persons such as Patrice Lumumba the martyr, Kwame Nkrumah who radically deviating from the Gospel of Jesus when  he famously said, “ Seek ye first the political kingdom and all things shall be added unto you”, right up to the other martyr Walter Rodney, the prophets are indeed many, and indeed, in so far as Rastafari is a religion and a movement ( the Rastafarian Twelve Tribes of Israel had a “ Prophet Gad”)  in so far as  Robert Nesta Marley  did not claim to  be a Hebrew Prophet or a Prophet of Islam, who wants to forfeit him a right to the title of  Prophet/ Rasta Messenger / Rastafari prophet of a moral universe  of the Rastafari religion?

 Third World had a hit, “Lagos Jump”

( To be concluded shortly)

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