Between Revolution and the Market: Bob Marley and the Cultural Politics of the Youth Icon

Prestholdt, Jeremy

doi:10.1007/978-3-030-41909-7_9

Jeremy Prestholdt¹¹

Part of the book series: Palgrave Studies in the History of Subcultures and Popular Music ((PSHSPM))

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Abstract

By tracing shifting interpretations of Bob Marley, this chapter demonstrates how youth icons are collectively reimagined across social and political boundaries. Prestholdt analyzes how a figure that represented a relatively obscure musical genre at the beginning of the 1970s became a globally recognized voice for diverse social and political movements by the end of the decade. By the 1990s, however, fans and marketers simultaneously de-emphasized the militant edges of Marley’s message, reimagining him more as a transcendent mystic than a revolutionary. The chapter identifies the central developments and actors that drove this process of collective reimagining.

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Notes

1.
See, for example, S.J. Drucker and R.S. Cathcart (eds.), American Heroes in a Media Age (Cresskill, NJ Hampton, 1994); S. Brunk and B. Fallaw (eds.), Heroes and Hero Cults in Latin America (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2006); D. Herwitz, The Star as Icon: Celebrity in the Age of Mass Consumption (New York: Columbia University Press, 2008); S.J. Drucker and G. Gumpert (eds.), Heroes in a Global World (Cresskill, NJ: Hampton, 2008); B. Feldges, American Icons: The Genesis of a National Visual Language (New York: Routledge, 2008); K.G. Tomaselli and D.H.T. Scott (eds.), Cultural Icons (Walnut Creek, CA: Routledge, 2009); J.C. Alexander, ‘The Celebrity-Icon’, Journal of Sociology vol. 4 (2010) no. 3, 323–36; J.D. Ebert, Dead Celebrities, Living Icons: Tragedy and Fame in the Age of the Multimedia Superstar (Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger, 2010); D.C. Niebylski and P. O’Connor (eds.), Latin American Icons: Fame Across Borders (Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 2014).
2.
B. Ghosh, Global Icons: Apertures to the Popular (Durham: Duke University Press, 2011); J. Prestholdt, Icons of Dissent: The Global Resonance of Che, Marley, Tupac, and Bin Laden (New York: Oxford Univeristy Press, 2019).
3.
W. Binder, ‘The Emergence of Iconic Depth: Secular Icons in a Comparative Perspective’ in J.C. Alexander, D. Bartmański, and B. Giesen (eds.), Iconic Power: Materiality and Meaning in Social Life (New York: Palgrave, 2012), 113.
4.
H. Charlton, ‘Introduction’ in T. Ziff (ed.) Che Guevara: Revolutionary & Icon (New York: Abrams Press, 2006), 7–14.
5.
J. Prestholdt, ‘Resurrecting Che: Radicalism, the Transnational Imagination and the Politics of Heroes’, Journal of Global History vol. 7 (2012) no. 3, 506–526.
6.
D. Kunzle (ed.), Che Guevara: Icon, Myth, and Message (Los Angeles: UCLA Fowler Museum of Cultural History, 1997); Ziff, Che Guevara; M. Casey, Che’s Afterlife: The Legacy of an Image (New York 2009); O. Besancenot and M. Löwy, Che Guevara: His Revolutionary Legacy (New York: Vintage Books, 2013); P. Raman, ‘Signifying Something: Che Guevara and Neoliberal Alienation in London’ in H.G. West and P. Raman (eds.), Enduring Socialism: Explorations of Revolution and Transformation, Restoration and Continuation (New York: Berghahn, 2009); M.-C. Cambre, The Semiotics of Che Guevara: Affective Gateways (New York: Bloomsbury, 2015); Prestholdt, Icons of Dissent.
7.
On this process of reduction see D. Bartmański and J.C. Alexander, ‘Introduction: Materiality and Meaning in Social Life: Toward an Iconic Turn in Cultural Sociology’, in Alexander, Bartmański, and Giesen, Iconic Power, 2.
8.
A notable exception to this is R. Steffens, ‘Forward: Bob Marley: Artist of the Century’, and ‘Bob Marley: Cultural Icon’, in H. Bordowitz (ed.), Every Little Thing Gonna Be Alright: The Bob Marley Reader (Cambridge, MA: Da Capo Press, 2004). Steffens astutely described Bob Marley as a ‘rebel for all reasons’. R. Steffens, ‘Bob Marley: Cultural Icon’, xx.
9.
P. Gilroy, Darker than Blue: On the Moral Economies of Black Atlantic Culture (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010).
10.
J. Bradshaw, ‘The Reggae Way to “Salvation”’, New York Times Magazine, 14 August 1977.
11.
Bob Marley’s refrain of universal liberation drew on a much longer tradition, one traceable to the Age of Revolution. See M. West and W. Martin, ‘Introduction: Contours of the Black International’, in: M.O. West, W.G. Martin, and F.C. Wilkins (eds.), From Toussaint to Tupac: The Black International since the age of Revolution (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2009), 5, and B.G. Plummer, In Search of Power: African Americans in the era of decolonization, 1956–1974 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013).
12.
R. Nettleford, ‘Greetings on behalf of the University of the West Indies’, in: E. Wint and C. Cooper (eds.), Bob Marley: The Man and his Music (Kingston: Arawak, 1995), xiv–xv.
13.
C. Sampson, ‘Nothing But a Revolution’, The Times, 18 May 1989; L. Williams, ‘Americans Sense a New Patriotism’, New York Times, 4 July 1990.
14.
K. Dawes, Bob Marley: Lyrical Genius (London 2002), 187–8.
15.
D. Snowden, ‘Marley’s Ghost’, Los Angeles Times, 9 October 1988.
16.
On the Black Power movement in Jamaica and its influence on reggae see J. Bradford, ‘Brother Wally and De Burnin’ of Babylon: Walter Rodney’s Impact on the Reawakening of Black Power, the Birth of Reggae, and Resistance to Global Imperialism’ in S. Christiansen and Z.A. Scarlett (eds.), The Third World in the Global 1960s (New York: Berghahn, 2012), 142–56.
17.
M. Witter, ‘Soul Rebel: Bob Marley and the Caribbean Revolution’, The Beat vol. 13 (1992) no. 3, 38.
18.
Toynbee, Bob Marley, 220; B. Hagerman, ‘Everywhere Is War: Peace and Violence in the Life and Songs of Bob Marley’, Journal of Religion and Popular Culture vol. 24 (2012) no. 3, 380–392.
19.
R. Hilburn, ‘Marley Sends his Message Through Special Delivery’, Los Angeles Times, 27 November 1979.
20.
S.V. Davidson, ‘Leave Babylon: The Trope of Babylon in Rastafarian Discourse’, Black Theology no. 6 (2008) no. 1, 46–60.
21.
E.B. Edmonds, ‘Dread “I” In-a-Babylon: Ideological Resistance and Cultural Revitalization’ in N.S. Murrell, W.D. Spencer, and A.A. McFarlane (eds.), Chanting Down Babylon: the Rastafari Reader (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1998), 27, 24–5.
22.
P. Walshe, ‘The Evolution of Liberation Theology in South Africa’, Journal of Law and Religion vol. 5 (1987) no. 2, 299–311.
23.
E. Brodber, ‘Black Consciousness and Popular Music in Jamaica in the 1960s and 1970s’, Caribbean Quarterly vol. 31 (1985) no. 2, 53–66; Price, ‘Political and Radical Aspects of the Rastafarian Movement’.
24.
D. Jewell, ‘Reggae for Revolution’, Sunday Times, 20 June 1976.
25.
G. Stephens, On Racial Frontiers: The New Culture of Frederick Douglass, Ralph Ellison, and Bob Marley (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 191.
26.
N.J. Savishinsky, ‘Transnational Popular Culture and the Global Spread of the Jamaican Rastafarian Movement’, New West Indian Guide vol. 8 (1994) no. 3–4, 260; D. MacNeil, The Bible and Bob Marley: Half the Story Has Never Been Told (Eugene, OR.: Cascade Books 2013). See also, M. Sterling, Babylon East: Performing Dancehall, Roots Reggae, and Rastafari in Japan (Durham: Duke University Press, 2010).
27.
Dawes, Bob Marley.
28.
E. Kwayana, ‘Preface’ in H Campbell (ed.), Rasta and Resistance: From Marcus Garvey to Walter Rodney (Trenton, NJ. 1987); Stephens, On Racial Frontiers, 214; ‘Voices: Bob Marley’s Worldwide Impact’, The Beat vol. 14 (1995) no. 3, 59.
29.
J. Rockwell, ‘Reggae: Bob Marley’, New York Times, 19 June 1978.
30.
D. Snowden, ‘Marley’s Ghost’, Los Angeles Times, 9 October 1988.
31.
H. Dalrymple, Bob Marley: Music, Myth & the Rastas (Sudbury, UK.: Carib-Arawak, 1976), 30.
32.
C. Blackwell, ‘Bob Marley: Absolutely, Truly Natural’, Review: Literature and Arts of the Americas vol. 43 (2010) no. 2, 152–3.
33.
See also R.L. Hepner, ‘Chanting Down Babylon in the Belly of the Beast: The Rastafarian Movement in the Metropolitan United States’ in Chanting Down Babylon, 199–2015.
34.
S. Jones, Black Culture, White Youth: The Reggae Tradition from JA to UK (London: Macmillan 1988), 42; Gilroy, Darker than Blue, 112.
35.
D. Hebdige, Subculture: The Meaning of Style (London: Routledge, 1979).
36.
Jones, Black Culture, White Youth, 94–5.
37.
Hebdige, Subculture. Music critic John Rockwell recorded that during his time with the Sex Pistols in the late 1970s the group listened exclusively to reggae between shows. J. Rockwell, ‘They Flavor their Rock with Reggae’, New York Times, 11 November 1979.
By 1981 punk bands in Eastern Europe had similarly embraced Marley. For instance, the Gdansk outfit Tilt incorporated ‘Get Up, Stand Up’ into their live performances. Andrzej Jakubowicz, ‘Dread inna Polan’, The Beat vol. 3(1984) no. 2, 9–10.
38.
Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, ‘Bono Inducts Bob Marley into Rock and Roll Hall of Fame’, 12 December 2011, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L3Hb5qM4ldg (accessed: 10 January 2014).
39.
Jones, Black Culture, White Youth, 161 and passim; Toynbee, Bob Marley, 218.
40.
Jones, Black Culture, White Youth, 161–2.
41.
Jones suggested that even groups on the far right incorporated Marley’s words into their political rhetoric. Ibid., 101–2; Hebdige, Subculture.
42.
H. Campbell, ‘Rastafari as Pan Africanism in the Caribbean and Africa’, African Journal of Political Economy vol. 2 (1988) no. 1, 75–88; A.M. Waters, Race, Class, and Political Symbols: Rastafari and Reggae in Jamaican Politics (New Brunswick, NJ.: Transaction, 1985), 187–8.
43.
K. Mattson, ‘Did Punk Matter?: Analyzing the Practices of a Youth Subculture During the 1980s’, American Studies vol. 42 (2001) no. 1, 69–97.
44.
M. Stein and B. Logan (dir.) Bad Brains: A Band in DC. Plain Jane Productions (streaming video; 2012).
45.
A. Walker, ‘Redemption Day’, Mother Jones, December 1986.
46.
Dawes, Bob Marley, 249; Don Snowden, ‘Marley: A Matter of ‘Survival”, Los Angeles Times, 11 November 1979.
47.
P. Hofmann, ‘The Swiss Malaise’, New York Times, 8 February 1981.
48.
F. Polletta, ‘Politicizing Childhood: The 1980 Zurich Burns Movement’, Social Text vol. 33 (1992), 82–102, 83, 92.
49.
‘Der Sänger, der zum Heiligen wurde Bob Marley, der bekannteste Musiker der Dritten Welt, lebte für seine Musik und in seinen Widersprüchen’, Tages-Anzeiger, 8 May 2012.
50.
Quoted in H. Nigg, ‘Violence and Symbolic Resistance in the Youth Unrest of the Eighties’ in S. Gau and K. Schlieben (eds.), Spektakel, Lustprinzin oder das Karnivaleske? Ein Reader über Möglichkeiten, Differenzerfahrungen und Strategien des Karnevalesken in kultureller/politischer Praxis (Berlin 2008), 141–166, 153.
51.
G. Okihiro, ‘Afterward: Toward a Black Pacific’ in H. Raphael-Hernandez and S. Steen (eds.), AfroAsian Encounters: Culture, History, Politics (New York: New York University Press, 2006), 313–330, 325; quoting Ku’ualoha Ho’omanawanui, ‘Yo, Brah, It’s Hip Hop Jawaiian Style: The Influence of Reggae and Rap on Contemporary Hawaiian Music’, Hawaii Review vol. 56 (2001), 153.
52.
Journalist and author Colin Campbell surmised that by the late 1970s Bob Marley was likely the most recognized ‘contemporary folk hero’. ‘Reggae Rebels’, 60 Minutes (Australia) 1979.
53.
West and Martin, ‘Introduction: Contours of the Black International’, 37. See also A.L. Trometter, ‘Malcolm X and the Aboriginal Black Power Movement in Australia, 1967–1972’, The Journal of African American History vol. 100 (2015) no. 2, 226–249.
54.
Toynbee, Bob Marley, 216–17; J. Castles, ‘Tjungaringanyi: Aboriginal Rock’, in: P. Hayward (ed.), From Pop to Punk to Postmodernism: Popular Music and Australian Culture from the 1960s to the 1990s (Sydney 1992), [30]. See also Okihiro, ‘Afterward’, 313–30.
55.
Clough, ‘Jamming Down Under’, 30.
56.
M. Flanagan, ‘A Legend of the Land’, The Age (Australia), 15 November 2008.
57.
Refining his point, Yunupingu noted that ‘[s]ome of the things I feel about my life, our country’ were similar to those ‘Marley would have felt’. Quoted in T. White, Catch a Fire: The Life of Bob Marley (New York: Omnibus 2000), 414.
58.
F.J. van Dijk, ‘JAHmaica: Rastafari and Jamaican Society, 1930–1990’, PhD Thesis, Utrecht University, 1998, 264; idem, ‘Chanting Down Babylon Outernational: The Rise of Rastafari in Europe, the Caribbean, and the Pacific’ in Murrell, Spencer, and McFarlane, Chanting Down Babylon, 194.
59.
Savishinsky, ‘Transnational Popular Culture’, 273–4; See also W.G. Hawkeswood, ‘I’N’I Ras Tafari: Identity and the Rasta Movement in Auckland’, MA Thesis, Department of Anthropology, University of Auckland, 1983.
60.
Clough, ‘Jamming Down Under’, 26–9; L. Alvarez, ‘Reggae Rhythms in Dignity’s Diaspora: Globalization, Indigenous Identity, and the Circulation of Cultural Struggle’, Popular Music and Society vol. 31 (2008) no. 5, 575–97.
61.
H. Bain, ‘Bob’s still stirring it up’, The Dominion (Wellington), 20 January 2001.
62.
National Archives of South Africa, Cape Town Archives Repository (CAB), Cape Town, IDP3/398 P82/2/81 ‘Aansoek om ’n Beslissing – Survival’, 13 January 1982; P/92/07/36 ‘Application for Review, Survival’, 1 July 1992. See also J. Smith, ‘South Africa sees Body Heat but not the end of censorship’, The Globe and Mail (Canada), 4 May 1982.
63.
M. Marriott, ‘Marley and His Message’, Washington Post, 11 February 1985.
64.
For example, among those resisting the Indonesian military occupation of East Timor Marley became an inspirational icon of ‘just rebellion’ alongside Che Guevara and Nelson Mandela. See chapter 5 of Cambre, The Semiotics of Che Guevara.
Marley’s image became closely associated with support for the Timorese rebels, Armed Forces for the National Liberation of East Timor (Forças Armadas da Libertação Nacional de Timor-Leste, or Falintil). Marley’s calls for neocolonial liberation were attractive to Falintil supporters, and since many saw parallels between Marley’s dreadlocks and the hairstyles of Falintil guerrillas, his personal style also acted as an international symbolic linkage. H. Myrttinen, ‘Masculinities, Violence, and Power in Timor Leste’, Revue Lusotopie vol. 12 (2005) no. 1–2, 240–241; Moreover, graffiti and other forms of iconography that demonstrated support for the rebels frequently referenced Bob Marley. H. Myrttinen, ‘Histories of violence, states of denial-militias, martial arts and masculinities in Timor-Leste’, PhD Thesis, University of KwaZulu-Natal, 2010, 295.
65.
L. Fofana, ‘Sierra Leone—Politics: Bob Marley Joins the War’, IPS-Inter Press Service, 6 June 1995; UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, Sierra Leone: Humanitarian situation report, May (United Nations 2003).
66.
B. Clough, ‘Jamming Down Under: Bob Marley’s Legacy and Reggae Culture in Australia and New Zealand’ in Wint and Cooper, Bob Marley: The Man and his Music, 27.
67.
See Stephens, On Racial Frontiers, 215–6.
68.
M.A. Stephens, ‘Babylon’s “Natural Mystic”: The North American Music Industry, the Legend of Bob Marley, and the Incorporation of Transnationalism’, Cultural Studies vol. 12 (1998) no. 2, 139–167, 145–6; P. Gilroy, ‘Wearing Your Art on Your Sleeve. Notes Toward a Diaspora History of Black Ephemera’ in Ibid., Small Acts: Thoughts on the Politics of Black Cultures (London: Serpent’s Tail, 1993), 237–57; C. Salewicz, Bob Marley: The Untold Story (New York: Faber and Faber, 2009), 401–2; C. Kornelis, ‘How Bob Marley Was Sold to the Suburbs’, Phoenix New Times, 2 July 2014.
69.
Jones, Black Culture, White Youth, 68.
70.
Stephens, ‘Babylon’s “Natural Mystic”’ 145–6; Gilroy, ‘Wearing Your Art on Your Sleeve’; Salewicz, Bob Marley, 401–2.
71.
E. Gundersen, ‘“Legend”: Bob Marley’s best-of album, lands on a milestone’, USA Today, 30 July 2009; Salewicz, Bob Marley, 402; Kornelis, ‘How Bob Marley Was Sold’. In total, Marley has sold over 75 million albums since the mid-1990s. ‘How the Bob Marley Estate Still Makes Millions Every Year—Even Though He Died More Than 30 Years Ago’, Black Business.org, 9 April 2014, http://blog.blackbusiness.org/2014/04/how-bob-marley-estate-still-makes-millions.html#.VQaAUhYapGM. (accessed: 16 March 2015).
72.
Stephens, ‘Babylon’s “Natural Mystic”’, 148–9.
73.
N. Finke, ‘Bibles, Blond Locks: the New Rastafarians’, Los Angeles Times, 15 March 1987; Stephens, ‘Babylon’s “Natural Mystic”’, 163.
74.
This, in part, is why in 2014 a Lamu council assembly member voiced her intention to introduce a bill that would ban dreadlocks in Lamu. K. Kazungu, ‘Now Lamu Proposes to Outlaw Dreadlocks’, Daily Nation, 16 April 2014.
75.
H. Bordowitz, ‘Marley: Cultural Icon’ in Borowitz (ed.), Every Little Thing Gonna Be Alright, xiii–xv.

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University of California, San Diego, San Diego, CA, USA
Jeremy Prestholdt

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Leiden University, Leiden, The Netherlands
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Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Thierry P.F. Verburgh

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Prestholdt, J. (2020). Between Revolution and the Market: Bob Marley and the Cultural Politics of the Youth Icon. In: van der Steen, B., Verburgh, T. (eds) Researching Subcultures, Myth and Memory. Palgrave Studies in the History of Subcultures and Popular Music. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-41909-7_9

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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-41909-7_9
Published: 31 July 2020
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