All over of the world Bob Marley Day is celebrated on February 6th – the birthday of the Jamaican singer who popularized the Rastafarian lifestyle across the globe. Marley’s music is a testament to the liberation theology at the base of the Rastafari movement. His words captured the goal of the oppressed and served as a rallying call for those fighting against downpression and for equality.
Today Marley’s music is more popular than when he was with us in the flesh. Careful marketing is responsible for presenting Marley’s image to a new generation that was bound to find him because the struggle for equality and the search for songs of freedom are still relevant and pressing globally. In North America and Europe where Marley’s music is sold the most, his image is synonymous with weed (marijuana) smoking and being high – why is that? Michelle A. Stephens, PhD explained in her essay “Babylon’s ‘Natural Mystic’: The North American Music Industry, The Legend of Bob Marley, and the Incorporation of Transnationalism.”
Bob Marley’s significance as a popular cultural icon, both during his initial emergence in North America in the 1970s and after his death in 1981, has been a constantly evolving phenomenon. As American society and culture has adapted to the presence of new, racialized, West Indian immigrants, so too has Marley’s legend been adapted to fit the changing moods of the past three decades… From the Rastafarian outlaw of the 1970s through the natural family man of the 1980s to the natural mystic in the 1990s, Marley has represented ideologies of national liberation and black power, multiculturalism, universal pluralism and, most recently, transnationalism… the construction of Marley as the ‘natural mystic’ reflects the growth of the multinational corporation and mass media industries in this era of postmodernism and late capitalism.
Hear more from Dr. Stephens in this discussion with Dr. Jared Ball (voxunion.com) and Suzette Gardner (rastafaritoday.com) about the media’s evolution of Bob Marley’s image.
PART I – Download
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PART II – Download
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Upfull Marley Day to all!
February 9th, 2010at 7:05 am(#)
wait till the licensed products like bob marley lager and bob marley snowboards come out. thanks to the marley brothers selling the rights to his likeness
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123422801889765831.html
February 11th, 2010at 2:11 pm(#)
no, thanks to the machinations of white supremacy to establish a global economic plague called capitalism that makes virtually impossible to any non-european to live economically “free” in a world they run.
kudo’s to the family for trying to reign in some of what right rightfully belong to them… Bob Marley.
shame on the descendents of enslaved native peoples who like to shoot white supremacist edged judgement barbs at their cousins for trying to survive in this world. they never never never never seem to talk shit about thier Masters, though. why?
sheesh!!!