Burning Spear ~ Junior Murvin ~ Black State ~ Steel Pulse
Sixteen: Burning Spear ~ Slavery Days, 1996. Burnin’ Spear (AKA Winston Rodney) Was Backed By A Huge Ensemble of Black And White Musicians For His Performances. His Stage Name Is Honour of Jomo Kenyatta, Kenya’s First Head of State And A Former African Freedom Fighter ~ Who Was Known As Burnin’ Spear. Kenya Gained Independence From Colonial Britain And The Queen In 1963 (Who Nonetheless Remained Head of State). By 1964 It Became A Presidential Republic, With Jomo As Head of State, In His New Role As President.
[Alas The Uprisin’, Chaos, And Disorder Followin’ The Election of Micheal Ruto As The New President of Kenya On Monday Augutst 15 2022, Amid Claims of Election Impropriety, Proves Politics Does Not Necessarily Always Work Out Well Even When As African-Caribbeans We Rule Ourselves. But Nonetheless It Remains Our Overridin’ Right & Duty To Do So. Newly Independent Barbados Seems To Be Doing Well. Britain Seems To Have Gone To The Dogs Right Now In Any Event, With Corruption, Sleaze And Misdeeds All Around – Especially PartyGate & GatherGate In Lockdown].
The Fact That Bob Marley Encouraged Burnin’ Spear To Start His Career At Studio One, Jamaica, Is Just One of A Number of Touchin’ Stories of Robert Nestar Marley Encouragin’ Fellow Creatives To Explore Their Creative Capabilities. This Also Included The Aforementioned Musician Dennis Brown And Dennis Murray The Photographer. Rodney Was Born In St Annes The Same As Marcus Garvey And Indeed Marley. He Wrote A Number of Acclaimed Albums Dedicated To Garvey, Havin’ Indeed Worked With Studio One, Considered By Some To Be The Motown of Reggae.
Seventeen: Junior Murvin ~ Police And Thieves, 1980. The Clash Did A Version In 1977 Which He Was Not Over The Moon About Sayin’ “They Destroyed Jah Work.”
His Performance On Top of The Pops Reclaimed That Work.
(Jah Is The Rastafarian Term Used To Reference God. Babylon Is The Rastafarian Name Used To Reference The Unholy, The Harmful, The Devil, And The Wicked And Bad. And In Particular The Police. They Were Terrorisin’ Black People At The Time. And Continue To Terrorise Black People Today. Arugably Today They Are Not Gettin’ Away With It So Easily As Then. However It Remains The Fact That They Are Perceived To Have Done Little To Effectively Improve The Situation And Any Improvements Have Only Followed Community Action After Community Sufferin’ And Exposure of Poor Police Behaviour).
Again The Sex Pistols, The Police, The Clash, And The Jam Were Part of The Late 1970s Musical Revolution Seekin’ A New Style of Music, Just As The UK Reggae Scene Was Really Gainin’ Momentum. And In That Sense Their Was A Loose Kind of Affinity.
As Musician, Cultural Commenatator & Model Don Letts Says, They Were Part of The Punk Movement Which Whilst “Not Physically Similar To Reggae Were Spiritually Similar” In As Much As They Were Part of A 1970s & 1980s Musical Revolution (That They Were Pushin’ Themselves). The Sex Pistols Irreverant Punk Track ‘God Save The Queen’ Was An Example of That.
Eigtheen: Black State ~ Amigo, 1980. This Song Is A Dedication To Jah
Nineteen: Steel Pulse ~ Ku Klux Klan, (Members Dressed In Klan Robes). They Are An Example of How Reggae Groups And Some Punk Groups Collaborated Together With A Sense of Revolution. As Don Letts Says “If Not Physically, Then Spiritually”. Now Based In Washington, They Previously Appeared On The Same Bill AsThe Police And The Stranglers . Their Music Addressed Racism & Babylon Head On. In The Same Vein That Sees Many Not Persuaded By Some Musicians Controversially Usin’ The N-Word In Their Lyrics, Claimin’ They Are “Reclaimin” The Word, Steel Pulse Wearin’ KKK Hoods As Part of Their Performance, Was, To Use Modern Parlance ‘Not A Good Look’.
TheOrator.Press ~ A New, Monthly, Online, Independent Magazine 