Tweet
http://www.oxfordamerican.org/articl...8/chop-upbeat/
Music and politics in Jamaica can’t be pulled apart; they’re a double helix, something necessary to understand in order to get the significance of that famous One Love Peace Concert footage, in which Bob calls onstage and all but forcibly joins above his head the hands of Seaga and Seaga’s main leftist enemy, Michael Manley. The political conflict between those two, a crypto-front of the Cold War, was generating unprecedented levels of bloodshed in the “garrisons,” as Kingston calls its politically polarized urban districts. Our government feared the spread of communism in the Caribbean, and saw the democratic socialism of Manley as a step on the slippery slope to it. Bob was an on-the-record Manley supporter. All of a sudden it mattered geopolitically what this pot-headed dreadlocked mulatto street kid wanted to do.
It wasn’t Bob’s first experience of finding himself at the center of Jamaica’s violent political life. Not two years prior to that concert, he’d been shot by thugs loyal to Seaga, or men he assumed were Seaga thugs. That was in 1976. They burst into his home, firing on him and his wife, also his manager and a friend. Incredibly no one was killed. A mere forty-eight hours after the attack, he came down out of the mountains and went onstage (at another famous show, the Smile Jamaica concert) in front of 80,000 people, knowing full well that there were individuals in the crowd who wanted to finish him. He said he would do one song and did a dozen. In the footage you can see that he tries at one point to unbutton his shirt and show the crowd his bandaged wounds, but the police intervene and whisk him off the stage. Now it’s 1978, and he comes out of exile in England to do another full set in front of a huge Kingston crowd at the National Stadium, risking his life every minute and dancing like a rasta-colored dervish, delivering an improvised poem on the theme of unity, before spontaneously deciding to call up Manley and Seaga, two men literally at war with each other, one looking like he’s about to puke and pass out, the other smiling like he’s made of stone, but neither of them able to resist the power of Marley, who brings their hands together and holds them, hopping with his arm around Seaga (one of those moments that underscore the tragedy of reggae’s reputation, i.e., that so many people dismiss it as the stuff of bongs and dorm-room posters).
Music and politics in Jamaica can’t be pulled apart; they’re a double helix, something necessary to understand in order to get the significance of that famous One Love Peace Concert footage, in which Bob calls onstage and all but forcibly joins above his head the hands of Seaga and Seaga’s main leftist enemy, Michael Manley. The political conflict between those two, a crypto-front of the Cold War, was generating unprecedented levels of bloodshed in the “garrisons,” as Kingston calls its politically polarized urban districts. Our government feared the spread of communism in the Caribbean, and saw the democratic socialism of Manley as a step on the slippery slope to it. Bob was an on-the-record Manley supporter. All of a sudden it mattered geopolitically what this pot-headed dreadlocked mulatto street kid wanted to do.
It wasn’t Bob’s first experience of finding himself at the center of Jamaica’s violent political life. Not two years prior to that concert, he’d been shot by thugs loyal to Seaga, or men he assumed were Seaga thugs. That was in 1976. They burst into his home, firing on him and his wife, also his manager and a friend. Incredibly no one was killed. A mere forty-eight hours after the attack, he came down out of the mountains and went onstage (at another famous show, the Smile Jamaica concert) in front of 80,000 people, knowing full well that there were individuals in the crowd who wanted to finish him. He said he would do one song and did a dozen. In the footage you can see that he tries at one point to unbutton his shirt and show the crowd his bandaged wounds, but the police intervene and whisk him off the stage. Now it’s 1978, and he comes out of exile in England to do another full set in front of a huge Kingston crowd at the National Stadium, risking his life every minute and dancing like a rasta-colored dervish, delivering an improvised poem on the theme of unity, before spontaneously deciding to call up Manley and Seaga, two men literally at war with each other, one looking like he’s about to puke and pass out, the other smiling like he’s made of stone, but neither of them able to resist the power of Marley, who brings their hands together and holds them, hopping with his arm around Seaga (one of those moments that underscore the tragedy of reggae’s reputation, i.e., that so many people dismiss it as the stuff of bongs and dorm-room posters).
Comment