Tribute to Robert Nesta Marley

"One good thing about (your) music, when it hits you feel no pain!" Do you remember where you were on this day in history? Do you remember where you were when the great Robert Nesta Marley left this earth on May 11th all of forty years ago? I remember. I think everyone does. Indeed, who could forget that soul-wrenching, sorrow-filled day?

Who could forget the day that fate stole a Prophet from us - strummed a last bar and whisked him from our midsts? It was as if time stood still for a moment, people froze in place trying to comprehend the incomprehensible. Jaws dropped while bosoms rose, chests heaving in distraught disbelief. A music-less staccato. A discordant chord. An unfinished musical phrase ....... hanging notes.

 I was but a slip of a high school girl in Lower Sixth Form. It was long before the days of cell phones and tablets and portable devices where breaking news alerts flashed instantaneously across our screens, and those "forwarded many times" messages would appear simultaneously in several of our Whatsapp and social media feeds. There was no scurrying quickly over to Facebook back then to see if others were talking about it, or shooting over to CNN or some other trusted online news site to confirm if it was really true, or if it was, as is too often the norm these days, just another bit of sensational fake news. There was none of that - probably just an urgent bit of breaking news on the radio. Yet the news spread like wild fire all throughout the school campus courtesy of the old-fashioned word-of-mouth kind of social media. And in the hushed silence as the reality sunk in, all thoughts immediately went to my school mate Deb. She was an avid Bob Marley enthusiast. Played his music day and night on the dorm. Just your typical come-wi-guh-chant-down-babylon middle class, well educated, well-read rebel with a little understood cause. An avant garde, feisty and vociferous sound box on matters of the mystical Rastafari. She went quiet that day, her usual buoyant, boisterous character muted, disappearing with her into the privacy of her dorm cubicle. Retreating from the world, much the same way that Bob had retreated from this world, from our world, slipping through our unsuspecting fingers still snapping in tune to his legendary conscious lyrics that hypnotized us into conscious “woke” stupors.

Yet as we wept in despair that he was gone, little did we know then that four decades on he would still be here. Gone but not forgotten. Here not just in spirit, but in thought and word and lyrical deed. How could we have known then that decades later his Marley-o-sophy would continue to offer healing to a broken and hurting world? How could we even have foretold there would still be so much trouble in the world? We could not have dreamt that twenty, thirty, forty years on there would still be War! And yet....... EVERYWHERE is War! We didn't understand then that there would be countless Buffalo soldiers, stolen from Africa....... STILL fighting for survival. A fighting and a troddin' and a fighting every day. No rest until the philosophy..... And no way could we have imagined that so many of those soldiers would have fallen.... They’ve fallen and can't get up. Can't get up because there are too many knees on their necks - while others stand aside and look. An' some a dem simply shrug and say it's just a part of it, but the rest.... the rest of us we say we nuh know how we and dem a guh work it out, cause someone will have to pay for the innocent blood they shed every day. So we've got to get up, we've got to stand up, stand up for their rights!

And when it all becomes too much, when we just get so sick an' tired of all the ism-skisms, we turn the lights down low as we observe de hypocrites. We console the grieving mothers, dry their tears and say....."No woman nuh cry. Get up, stand up, DON'T give up the fight!" And then we get up with them too. Yes, every morning we get up - searching, searching for those birds.... those three little birds perched on our doorsteps. We listen for their songs, for their melodies pure and true, and we tell ourselves, convince our souls that yes...... every little thing's gonna be alright. So we've got to, we've just got to push on through.

So don't you worry Brother Bob - don't you worry 'bout a thing. Forty turns around the sun, and still you trod on with us. We feel your presence with us, your spirit like a natural mystic blowing through the air, urging us on. And despite the void in our heart, we smile, embrace your timeless wisdom and say, Brother you're right, you're right, you're.... ohhh, you were sooooo right...... we've got to fulfill the book! See, in this great future, we can't forget our past. So you Brother Bob will NEVER BE FORGOTTEN. You are our past, our present, our future. Sleep on in Power! And while you sleep, we trod on in the struggle, knowing that we don't wanna wait in vain, that we won't wait in vain, cause one day, yes one day........Zion train is coming our way. SELAH