image: Wikimedia commons (link).
February 06 is the birthday of Bob Marley, born this day in 1945.
His music explored and articulated a wide range of subjects, especially overcoming and transcending injustice and oppression. It is rightfully widely beloved by so many because it is so consistently uplifting.
Below are some examples for your enjoyment and hopefully upliftment! Please continue at the bottom for a few additional comments.
"Rastaman Chant"
"Put it on"
"Small Axe"
The spiritual current running through the music of the Wailers is strongly evident on each of the above tracks, as are direct references to Biblical scriptures.
And yet in one of the band's most well-known songs, "Get Up, Stand Up," with its message of individual and social consciousness, there is an overt message decrying the negative role of religion (and specifically literalist Christian religion) intertwined through the song, most notably when Peter Tosh's unmistakeable voice breaks in to denounce "isms, schisms."
Clearly, while the band was rejecting the variations of the religions built upon those scriptures (most of them identified with names or labels ending with "-ism"), and the role that they have played in the oppression of the people, they did not see it as contradictory to use the scriptures themselves to convey a message of greater consciousness, blessing, and hope. See for instance the extensive and uplifting incorporation of scriptural themes in "Small Axe" (above), or in another song from the same album, "Hallelujah Time" (gorgeously sung by Bunny Wailer).
And in fact, watching videos of Bob Marley singing his music (whether live in concert or in the studio such as in the clip of "Rastaman Chant" included above), it can hardly be denied that he exhibits the characteristics of ecstatic transport when he is pouring out his song.
From the above discussion, it can be said that Bob Marley's music embraces what can be shown to be the original shamanic, uplifting, and consciousness-raising message that is actually contained within the world's ancient scriptures (from around the globe), while simultaneously rejecting the system which has actually taken those same scriptures and used them to teach a message that is often 180 degrees out from the original intent, and which has undeniably been used to oppress, to enslave and to wage war on consciousness.
In this sense, we can understand why Bob Marley's message and music appeals on such an incredibly widespread level around the world: because we actually have a universal, shared shamanic heritage, which certainly has widely different expressions and features in all of the different cultures and geographies and eras of our human experience, but which ultimately can be shown to shared shamanic features, such that we cannot say that shamanic experience "belongs" only to one group or place or time period.
It is the shared inheritance of all humanity.
The shamanic element of the Wailers' music (I believe) is also evident in the lyrics to the song "Put It On," particularly in the first stanza, in which the word "them" functions as a definite article which refers to "spirit" in the singular, but also apparently in the plural, and to which the title of the song almost certainly refers, meaning both "putting on the spirit" and also being in touch with the spirit realm and the (plural) spirits.
In "Put It On," Bob Marley sings:
Feel them spirit
Feel them spirit
Feel them spirit
Lord, I thank you
Lord, I thank you
Feel all right now
Feel all right now
Feel all right now
Good Lord, hear me
Good Lord, hear me
I'm not boasting
I'm not boasting
I'm not boasting
Feel like toasting
Feel like toasting
I'm gonna put it on In the morning
I'm gonna put it on In the night
I'm gonna put it on Anytime, Anywhere
Good Lord, help me
Good Lord, help me
No more crying
No more crying
No more crying
Lord, I thank you
Lord, I thank you
I'm gonna put it on
I'm gonna put it on
Feel all right now
Feel all right now
Lord, I thank you
Lord, I thank you
Lord, I thank you
Feel all right now
Feel all right now
Bob Marley, February 06, 1945 - May 11, 1981.
Respect.
