Echoes Of A Send-off (bob Marley In The Background)

When they became aware of my resignation from my last job, a group of colleagues thought it was a good idea to gather an evening after work at a bar to bid me farewell and send me off under the best auspices. A cross-spectrum of the organization, the group was comprised of an executive, a director (my boss), two of my peers and three from my staff. Their background was diverse as well: two African Americans, an Italian, an Irish, a Barbadian, a Jamaican, a Polish. I was very appreciative of the fact that they acknowledged my work and the rapport I was able to establish with all levels of the organization during my two-and-a-halfyear tenure. For, in the life of an organization, two and a half years is just a wink. There was a nice ambiance, where we exchanged our experiences, reminisced over past challenges and successes. Eventually, the conversation drifted toward the informal, after a few rounds of beer mugs, margaritas, and what not! The juke box came to play a selection of Bob Marley. Immediately, the conversation shifted to this world-renowned Jamaican artist. It was reported that his remains would be disinterred from Jamaica to be entombed in Ethiopia. My Jamaican colleague was incensed and cried foul. It was a conspiracy to deprive her country of its national treasure. There was no reason, she argued, to remove Marley’s remains from Jamaica’s soil, which witnessed his birth, nurtured him, and afforded him the springboard to reach his zenith. And now they wanted to dispossess her country of its most celebrated artist. (Never mind that in this case the culprit was Ethiopia, another Third World country!) As a Haitian who knows one thing or two about attempts to muffle small countries’ accomplishments, I sympathized with my fellow islander. For sure, Marley is a star of international stature. But the vehicle that made his talent known and appreciated the world over is very much indigenous to the Jamaican culture and way of life. The vernacular in which he expresses his ideas and the Reggae rhythm, among other things, are distinctive marks of his Jamaican lineage. And nothing suggests that he would find the Jamaican soil or people unworthy of his remains. Unlike many artists who, once they reach the pinnacle of their art and stardom status, distance themselves from their place of upbringing, he did not turn away from his country and his compatriots in time of need. Case in point--When Jamaica was polarized by the bitter premiership race opposing the socialist incumbent Prime Minister Michael Manley to the right-ring challenger Edward Seaga (backed by the Reagan Administration) and violence threatened to rip the country apart, Marley rose above the fray to broker peace between the two factions. It was his “One Love Peace Concert” featuring a handshake between the two candidates on stage that quelled the violence--which by the way nearly took his life fifteen months earlier and caused him to flee to London. Marley had all the reasons to sever his ties with his country of birth. Instead, he chose to reaffirm those ties, put his art to work to its benefit and, thus, saved it from degradation. This magnanimous act testified to his love for Jamaica. So, his remains belong and should stay there. Bob Marley is first and foremost Jamaican. But he belongs to universal patrimony as well. His artistry, undeniably, draws international acclaim. His powerful lyrics transcend national boundaries and resonate beyond cultural confines. Marley belongs in the select group of artists who tap into what the German anthropologist Carl Gustav Jung calls the “collective unconscious” to render an image or convey a message that echoes the sentiments of a cross-section of the human species. Great works of art—literary, pictorial, musical, sculptural or otherwise—are those that escape the realm of the artist’s personal inspiration or meaning to enter the universal domain, where a communion exists between the public and the artist to a point where the public sees itself not just a spectator but also a participant in the act of creation or re-creation. This re-creation process may even take the public to a sphere unknown to the artist or unforeseen by him at the inception of his work. Far from being diminished, his art comes out

richer as it is not limited in space or time. The artist thus becomes a medium or catalyst for human emotions, a conduit to universal creativity. This communion between public and artist is exemplified by Marley’s song “No Woman No Cry”. Almost each one at the table had a take on it. Marley was a philanderer, one said; he wrote the song, while in England, to reassure his wife of his commitment to their relationship, despite his amorous escapades. For somebody else, the song was written on the passing of a friend to sooth his devastated widow. Another opinion was that the song was an ode to Jamaica itself. Someone else alluded to the “weed” he idolized. For me, this song is indelibly linked to a documentary on the “Soweto Massacre” perpetrated in June 1976 on black South African schoolchildren marching to protest new rules imposing the use of Afrikaans, Apartheid South Africa’s official language, in the educational system of their township. Some two hundred children were gunned down, another four hundred injured by live bullets fired by the police in this savage act that showed Apartheid’s true colors. The poignancy of the moment was encapsulated in the spectacle of a woman kneeling in the middle of the road, holding the inert body of a child in his blood-stained school uniform, her face turned toward the sky as if to hold God witness or accountable to the horrible act. The image was all the more dramatic that it was filmed in slow motion, capturing the minute details of the woman’s teary face and her lips muttering inaudible words that could only be deciphered as “Why?” Fittingly, in the background “No Woman No Cry” was playing, Marley lending a voice to the fallen body, comforting the grief-stricken woman and prophesizing “Everything’s gonna be all right.” “No Woman No Cry” is striking by its ambivalence. On the one hand, it is a mourning cry over the feminine condition, over the plight of women as front-line victims of the heavy-handed tactics of the enemies of societal change. It reminds them that life is a struggle, a rite of passage, where adepts fall along the way under the watchful eyes of the hypocrites. Yet, it is also a coronation of women as mothers of change, rallying them around the cause they espoused alongside their men and exhorting them to “keep on pushing through”—so that the sacrifices and privations they endured are not vain. “Don’t shed no tears! Everything’s gonna be all right!” This song is dedicated to those mothers, wives, daughters who have had or will have the difficult task of burying their loved ones, fallen prematurely in pursuit of a dream larger than life. “No Woman No Cry” Coretta Scott King, widow of Martin Luther King, slain civil rights leader Myrlie Evers, widow of Medgar Evers, slain civil rights leader Betty Shabbazz, widow of Malcom X, slain civil rights leader Mamie Till, mother of Emmett Till, African American teen killed in the segregated South Ethel Kennedy, widow of Robert Kennedy, slain American presidential candidate Isabel Allende, daughter of Chilean President Savador Allende killed in a coup d’etat Pauline Lumumba, widow of Patrice Lumumba, First Prime Minister of Congo, executed

And all those unknown mothers, whose sons perished from death penalty for crimes they did not commit.