Redemption Song - ------

[Panamarisen]

Maybe Bob Marley´s best.
Maybe the best reggae song ever.
Maybe the best Revolutionary song ever.

HASTA LA VICTORIA SIEMPRE!

[canikickit]

No. It's impossible. It couldn't be the best reggae song. Too many other songs. If you want to get pedantic and picky about it, it's not even a reggae song, more of a folk song.

Besides all that it is an absolutely fantastic song.

[Panamarisen]

So..., GOOD, canikickit, I just LOVE pedantic songs like this one! I just love Marley´s throat singing this one, the way he does it. I just love the lyrics, I just love the message, the music, all of it!
I´m a motorcycle rider, and this is one of the most meaningful songs I have always in my mind when I travel...

HASTA LA VICTORIA SIEMPRE!

[canikickit]

I didn't mean the song itself was pedantic. I just meant it didn't really contain all the classic little things that go into making a song "reggae". But that's neither here nor there, I haven't litened to it in a long time, but I love it.

I recommend you try and get your hands on "Redemption Song (Live in Pittsburgh)", it's on the "Songs of Freedom" boxset, and it is truly a great song made greater. Especially if you like percussion, it's got the sweet little congas that come in after a minute and a half....yeah.

[Panamarisen]

Thanks a lot, canikickit, for your post...!

HASTA LA VICTORIA SIEMPRE!

[Lefty]

my favorite marley song. It calms me, even when I am so incredibly pissed off at something.

[canikickit]

I'm sure a lot of you appreciate this song for the passion Bob puts into it. Well, according to his peers there is a song that he put more passion into.

Here's our good friend, Marcia Griffiths (of the I-Threes);


"Bob was partially sad, concernedand questioning so that was one of the most serious sessions that we did. Bob does every single one of his songs with such conviction, but he was more forceful and firm that night than we have ever seen him. Whatever was being said, he knew Jah was alive, his Majesty was alive come what may. That was the conviction that he did that song with."

Some of the more fundamental of you might not be able to accept this song with it's very strong religious message, but you can absolutely hear the passion, and I think it's beautiful. You can listen to it, and a few other excellent tunes, here. (http://www.ireggae.com/soundz.htm) Scroll down until you come to "Bob Marley, A collection of 7" singles", it's the first song (I think on the playlist), you should also accept the fact that reggae is the nicest music in the world and listen to some of the other artists there. I recommend [b]Culture and Dennis Brown, to start off with.

[canikickit]

http://www.firecorner.com/mainindex.html

Check out the maximum nice instrumental selection.

[Spiritual Minded]

How is it not a reggae song? the thick patois and electric music that many Jamaicans use is dancehall... i thought Marley was the definition of REGGAE??

[canikickit]

It's not technically (and pedantically) a reggae song because:
[list]
it doesn't have a rythym guitar on the 2 and 4 beats.
it doesn't have a reggae drum pattern, ie a One Drop or Flyers pattern.
it doesn't have an organ shuffle.
it doesn't have percussion.
it doesn't have harmony singers.
it doesn't have a melodic bassline.
[list]

Bob Marley is absolutely not the fucking definition of reggae music. Bob Marley is MTV's definition of reggae.

[mentalbunny]

it is a fucking awesome sing though, no-one can deny that. I have to get hold of it somewhere, Marley is a fucking GOD!

[Dhul Fiqar]

www.kazaa.com is a good place for any music

canikickit: Sorry it took me so long to get in here, I just got your message :biggrin:

I don't have a lot to add right now, except that Redemption Song always gives me goosebumps because it was one of Bob's last recordings (was it the last?). Anyway, it's a fantastic song, but it is obviously not reggae by any proper definition of the word. I think canikickit has already covered that though...


Oh, and I'm checking out that link right now, comments to come later :)

--- G.

[canikickit]

I hate Kazaa, it's not up to my standards at all. I used to be able to get so much beautiful music on Audio Galaxy. Cottonsarn it.

Dhul, you should be sure to check out that page thouroughly, there are songs from Judy Mowatt's album "Black Woman" there. I didn't listen to it, but anyway.
And Big Youth as well. Big Youth is an international hero.

[Dhul Fiqar]

Man, that page goes on forever, lots of cool stuff there but the sound quality isn't always too hot.

Thanks for the link dude, Jah protect :)

--- G.

[canikickit]

Yeah, man. I'm glad the sound quality is like that, otherwise my crappy modem could never handle it.

You've heard of Mikey Dread, right?

Well, it's not on that page, but somewhere on the main page there is a link to Mikey Dread's christmas special 1978, on Jamaican, I only listened to the start of it, but it sounded pretty cool. It's a part of history, man.

I always wanted to hear a Mikey Dread show.
You ever read that book, Bass Culture? You should.

[Dhul Fiqar]

Mikey Dread is da shitznitz (I love that word) :)

Cool, I'll look it up on Amazon next time I order schoolbooks, what is it about?

--- G.

[canikickit]

It's about Reggae. It's full title is, "Bass Culture: When Reggae Was King" and it was written by Lloyd Bradley.

He tells the story of reggae from the fifties up until the end of the seventies (and the roots era). He goes a bit into the more modern stuff, but he obviously isn't a fan so doesn't dwell on it too much.
He also talks about the situation inna Inglan quite a bit, which I found a bit boring at times. He's English himself, and used to run a soundsystem in London.
The book is fantastic, there are times when he just lets people talk about the situation.
Mikey Dread talks about King Tubby, Leroy Sibbles (of the Heptones) talks extensively on the old Studio One days and his time in the Black Ark.

[Panamarisen]

Gosh, and think that my grandfather was born in Jamaica (but Indian race) and we never talked about reggae when I was a child and he was alive...

HASTA LA VICTORIA SIEMPRE!

[canikickit]

That's quite interesting, but I understood that all the indigenous people of Jamaica had been killed off by Christopher Come-Rob-Us (to coin a Peter Tosh phrase) and all his pirate friends? Did your grandfather migrate to Jamaica? There wasn't a very large population of Indian race there, was there?

[Dhul Fiqar]

They were not indegenous, they were brought as cheap immigrant (semi-slave) labour along with a bunch of Chinese. There are a couple of famous reggae session players who are Chinese Jamaicans.

Anyway, the Indian Jamaican influence is EXTREMELY important to the development of Rastafari, which is why I became interested in it. "Ganja" is itself not only an Indian word for cannabis, but they actually brought and popularized it. Also, the "dreadlock" hairstyle was brought by Indian Saddhu's who are holymen in the Hindu tradition.

So, do tell us more about your grandfather, are other members of your family also from Jamaica?

--- G.

[Dhul Fiqar]

Oh, one more thing I forgot to make clear, by "Indian" I mean "from India".

--- G.

[canikickit]

There are a couple of famous reggae session players who are Chinese Jamaicans.

Yeah, Leslie Kong (who produced lots of Bob's songs)and the Hookim Brothers were Chinese. Also Tony Chin (who I'm pretty sure would have been the guy playing guitar for Peter on that video, what do you reckon Dhul?), and Byron Lee who played with and basically ran the Dragonaires (one of whose songs you can hear in the Firecorner link I provided above).

I was aware of the Indian influence on rastafari, but I didn't realise there had actually been any there at any recent time. I would have thought I would have been aware, in the same way I was of the Chinese population. [Random musing: only a fool would live in China :biggrin:]

[Panamarisen]

Quote: from Dhul Fiqar on 1:56 am on Dec. 7, 2002
They were not indegenous, they were brought as cheap immigrant (semi-slave) labour along with a bunch of Chinese. There are a couple of famous reggae session players who are Chinese Jamaicans.

Anyway, the Indian Jamaican influence is EXTREMELY important to the development of Rastafari, which is why I became interested in it. "Ganja" is itself not only an Indian word for cannabis, but they actually brought and popularized it. Also, the "dreadlock" hairstyle was brought by Indian Saddhu's who are holymen in the Hindu tradition.

So, do tell us more about your grandfather, are other members of your family also from Jamaica?

--- G.




Well, I am learning things about Indian people migrating to Jamaica and about the origins of Rastafarism that I didn´t know! I will look forward for more info about the subject. Please, tell my about a good website!

Yes, when I said Indian I meant "from India". Only grandfather was born in Jamaica (his parents were born in India, don´t know which part exactly). Grandmother was born in Martinique (her father came from France and her mother was a sihj Indian-blodded woman).


HASTA LA VICTORIA SIEMPRE!

[canikickit]

The vast majority of what I learned about rasta, I learned from books about reggae. These four books in particular:[list]
Bass Culture: When Reggae was King
People Funny Boy - The Genius of Lee 'Scratch' Perry
Catch a Fire (Bob Marley biography)
Rude Boy - Once Upon a Time in Jamaica[list]

The bottom one is just the story of a reggae journalist who spent a lot of time in Jamaica.

I don't really know any good websites about rastafarianism, but I wrote a lot about it in Moskitto's forums. I'll post it here as well for the hell of it.

In 1930 or '29, Marcus Garvey supposedly said "Look to Africa for the crowning of a Black King, he shall be the Redeemer". A few years later Ras Tafari was crowned Emporer Haile Sellassie I of Etheopia. To Rastafarians this man became the Messiah.

Rastafarianism is based on a reinterpretation of the bible, particularily the Old Testament. They see Africa as the promised land, or Zion, and Babylon is everywhere else. But in reality, neither Babylon nor Zion are actual physical places, but states of mind, or being.

Babylon is represented by corruption and Wall Street and comercialism and materialism all the other bullshit in the world.

Rastafarianism is based on Black Nationalism or Black self-actualisation, but it goes beyond that really.

One of the beliefs of Rasta is that no argument goes unfinished, no comment exists merely in that moment but for eternity. I suppose the closest equivilent to a Rasta mass is a "groundation" it involves a reading from the Holy Piby, or Bible and "reasoning" sessions, debates on whatever is the order of the day, together with rasta drumming.

Ganja is a sacrament for rastafarians, taken for the purposes of meditation and reasoning.

Rastas dislike the Pope and Italy, based on the fact that Ethiopia was invaded way back in the day by Mussolini (they dislike them, but not neccessarily in a racist way). Also the fact that the Pope and papacy are viewed as corrupt, and back in the days of slavery, christianity was used as a way of placate the slaves.

If you want to learn more about Rasta listen to reggae music.


War ina Babylon
Fire fe the Vatican
Them Never Love Poor Marcus
Free Up the Weed
Free Up the Prisoners
Jah Live

[canikickit]

Haile Selassie is Jah, Jah is god.

Rastas use language in their own unique way:

they rarely say "us" or "we", they say "I and I", basically because it is inclusionary.

they pronounce Haile Selassie I, as I as in eye, not "the first" or "1". Because god is in everyone.

They replace a lot of suffixes or prefixes with I, like instead of "collie weed", they often say "I-lee weed", instead of "unity", "I-nity"

Peter Tosh, an integral (as important as Bob) member of the original Wailers, refered to UB40 as UB30 (probably because they were less than they were claiming to be ), and the owner of Island records, Chris Blackwell was refered to as "Chris Whiteworst".

Rasta also has strick dietry beliefs:

no salt
no meat (I've heard just no pork), excluding fish

food has to be "Ital" , a rasta word meaning.....? Holy, I guess would be close. Ital is just whatever is defined as the rasta way of living


[Of course, Jah is not seen as some sort of all powerful figure. Jah is everything, every rock, every branch every bird etc., etc. There have been moments in my life when I have [i]truly understood that.]

[Panamarisen]

Thanks, canikickit, I will write down the titles.

I got a Marley video with a collection of his most popular songs, and the video includes a lot of interviews. It´s really hard for me to understand him...! ;)

HASTA LA VICTORIA SIEMPRE!

[canikickit]

Yeah Bob is really hard to understand sometimes. That video is "Legend", yeah?

In this link (same one I posted above) you can listen to a lot of Peter Tosh acoustic songs plus a lot of interviews with him. There is also the Bob song Jah Live. I actually said all this before.

http://www.ireggae.com/soundz.htm

Here are the artists who sang those songs, if you're interested (even if you're not, they're still here :wink:):
[list]
War ina Babylon - Max Romeo
Fire fe the Vatican - Max Romeo
Them Never Love Poor Marcus - there are a lot of versions, Johnny Clarke, and the original is by the Mighty Diamonds
Free Up the Weed - Lee Perry
Free Up the Prisoners - Lee Perry (great song, 12 minutes of rambling relaxation)
Jah Live - Bob[list]

[Panamarisen]

When I try to get a song from those websites, my computer says I can´t, because "the Microsoft system doesn´t recognize" that kind of archive. What´s going on?

HASTA LA VICTORIA SIEMPRE!

[canikickit]

I'm not sure. Do you have a real player? That's what I use to play them, I think it is the only option. If you don't have one you can download them all over the place, there's probably a link on that site.

What have you been doing, just clicking on the link? Sometimes that doesn't work for me, so what I do is right click, save target as, and then open the file with my real player.

I don't know if that's any help, I just checked and most of the links are working for me.

[Panamarisen]

I used to have real player, but I cleaned up the whole pc and now I don´t. I will download the program as soon as I can. The program I use to listen music (cd) is the Windows media reproductor. This most be the problem.

HASTA LA VICTORIA SIEMPRE!

H