“Get Up, Stand Up” may be the most potent song ever about human rights and the fight to secure them. Hear most of Bob Marley’s 50 Greatest Songs on Spotify. “His melodies take up a resonance in our minds, in our lives, and that can provide admission to the songs’ meanings… He was the master of mellifluent insurgency.” “Marley sang about tyranny and anger, about brutality and apocalypse, in enticing tones, not dissonant ones,” Mikal Gilmore wrote in 2005. His songs of freedom have become universal hymns. His artistic fearlessness and social commitment remain an inspiration to activists, musical and otherwise. He is a cornerstone of 21st-century music, covered by countless singers, sampled and quoted by just as many hip-hop acts whose artistic DNA is shaped profoundly by the Jamaican music Marley defined. Marley’s stature and influence as a singer, songwriter, and international pop-culture prophet have only grown since those words were written. But, in fact, he was a man with deep religious and political sentiments who rose from destitution to become one of the most influential music figures in the last 20 years.” In the 1981 Rolling Stone obituary, Bob Marley biographer Timothy White wrote, “The pervasive image of Bob Marley is that of a gleeful Rasta with a croissant-sized spliff clenched in his teeth, stoned silly and without a care in the world. It’s being republished in honor of what would have been Bob Marley’s 75th birthday, February 6th, 2020. The three bonus tracks on the 2001 reissue are all by Tosh and Wailer, though recorded at the album's sessions, suggesting the source of their frustration.This list was originally published March 28th, 2014. Bob Marley was a first among equals, of course, and after this album his partners, Peter Tosh and Bunny Wailer, quit the group, which thereafter was renamed Bob Marley and the Wailers. Such songs illuminated the desperation of poor Jamaican life, but they also looked forward to religious salvation, their themes accentuated by the compelling rhythms and the alternating vocals of the three singers. Here, on "Burnin' and Lootin'," they take issue with fellow Jamaican Jimmy Cliff's song of the previous year, "Many Rivers to Cross," asking impatiently, "How many rivers do we have to cross/Before we can talk to the boss?" "I Shot the Sheriff," the album's most celebrated song, which became a number one hit in the hands of Eric Clapton in 1974, claims self-defense, admits consequences ("If I am guilty I will pay"), and emphasizes the isolated nature of the killing ("I didn't shoot no deputy"), but its central image is violent. The Wailers are explicit in their call to violence, a complete reversal from their own 1960s "Simmer Down" philosophy. The confrontational nature of the group's message is apparent immediately in the opening track, "Get Up, Stand Up," as stirring a song as any that emerged from the American Civil Rights movement a decade before. But they fit in seamlessly with the newer material, matching its religious militancy and anthemic style. Given that speed, it's not surprising that several tracks - "Put It On," "Small Axe," and "Duppy Conqueror" - are re-recordings of songs dating back a few years. The Wailers' fourth album overall, Burnin', was their second for Island Records, released only six months after its predecessor, Catch a Fire.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |