redemption song (a review)

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Redemption Works: From ‘‘AfricanRedemption’’ to ‘‘Redemption Song’’

Robert A. Hill

Robert A. Hill is Professor of History at UCLA and the editor in chief of themultivolume edition of The Marcus Garvey & Universal Negro Improve-ment Association Papers, within the James S. Coleman African StudiesCenter. He is also the literary executor of the estate of C.L.R. James. Theeditor of numerous historical editions (Marcus Garvey’s The Black Man;Cyril V. Briggs’s The Crusader; The FBI’s RACON; and George P. Schuyler’sBlack Empire and Ethiopian Stories), he is currently preparing forpublication The Ras Tafari Bible: JAH Version.

Reggae is a vehicle, is a vehicle that is used to translate a message ofredemption to the people upon earth today, we use for that . . .*Bob Marley1

‘‘Redemption Song,’’ Bob Marley’s achingly beautiful plainsong*like theevocative lament ‘‘No Woman No Cry’’*came at the end of one ofthe most extraordinary lives in modern music. It was introduced at thecompletion of his final album, Uprising, released in May 1980 (IslandRecords, ILPS 9596) [fig. 1]. Timothy White, one of Marley’s biographers,describes ‘‘Redemption Song’’ as ‘‘a plaintive, almost Dylanesque acousticspiritual, devoid of any trace of reggae. When he sang it, he wore theexpression of a playful child, but his voice bore the authority of a Biblicalpatriarch.’’2

Possessing a more or less independent character from the rest of theUprising album*indeed, from the larger repertoire of songs that herecorded*‘‘Redemption Song’’ came after all the essential parts of BobMarley’s brilliant career. ‘‘Redemption Song’’ stands at the apex of hiscareer: there was nothing more for him to write. It was as if he had writtenhis own eulogy by which he wished to be remembered. Musicologist Ian

1. ‘‘Marley Legend: CDTranscription,’’ Track 6,in James Henke, MarleyLegend: An IllustratedLife of Bob Marley (SanFrancisco: ChronicleBooks, 2006), 18.

2. Timothy White, Catch aFire: The Life of BobMarley, rev. and enl.(New York: Henry Holtand Company, 1983,1989), 306.

Review: Literature and Arts of the Americas, Issue 81, Vol. 43, No. 2, 2010, 200!207

Review: Literature and Arts of the Americas ISSN 0890-5762 print/ISSN 1743-0666 online # 2010 Americas Society, Inc.http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals DOI: 10.1080/08905762.2010.514400

Downloaded By: [HCL Harvard College] At: 01:14 28 November 2010

McCann pointedly observes: ‘‘As for the autobiographical element, castinghimself as a singer and freedom fighter, this is not Bob as a player ofreggae, as he was in ‘Trenchtown Rock’ and ‘Lively Up Yourself,’ it is Bobas the music itself. It was all he ever had, it was all he was.’’3

Stephen Davis, another biographer, notes that the song was ‘‘a totaldeparture, a deeply personal verse sung to the bright-sounding acousticstrumming of Bob’s Ovation Adamis guitar.’’4 ‘‘Redemption Song’’marked a definite conclusion, the last song on the final album that Bobrecorded, released on 10 June 1980. The poignancy of the circumstances(Bob would die within eighteen months of the recording), evoked by thelyrics, imparts to ‘‘Redemption Song’’ the character of a musical coda aswell as a memorial, both an anthem to life and a farewell. With thestripped down accompaniment of acoustic guitar heightening thepowerful immediacy of his voice, Bob Marley is still speaking to us, asit were, from beyond the grave.

The story of how the song was added to the album is told in TimothyWhite’s biography: ‘‘When Chris Blackwell [the producer] first heard thetapes for Uprising, which included a haunting song called ‘Come We GoBurn Down Babylon (One More Time),’ he stunned the band [theWailers] by telling Bob he felt he had something more to give to thealbum.’’ According to White, ‘‘Marley smiled, uncomplaining, andreturned the next day with two new compositions, ‘Coming in from theCold’ and ‘Redemption Song.’ ’’5 The scene is described in Chris Salewicz’srecent biography of Marley, along with an appraisal of the song’ssignificance in the Marley opus:

The next day the musician [Marley] played Blackwell a tape of ‘Redemption Song’,

the song he had been working on sporadically for over a year. A folk ballad, played

Fig. 1. Bob Marley. Uprising, 1980. Image Courtesy of Island Records.

3. Ian McCann, TheComplete Guide to theMusic of Bob Marley(London: OmnibusPress, 1994), 101.

4. Stephen Davis, BobMarley, rev. ed.(Rochester, Vermont:Schenkman Books,1990), 224.

5. White, Catch a Fire, 306.

Redemption Works 201


on an acoustic guitar, the song had a crystalline beauty that was like a summation

of the entire philosophy of Bob Marley, an elegiac work whose haunting qualities

came to dominate the album when positioned as its closing track.6

Marley knew that he had the two songs already in the can. A prelude to‘‘Redemption Song’’ had been announced in July 1979, at the extra-ordinary Amandla concert before twenty-five thousand people at HarvardUniversity’s football stadium in Boston [fig. 2]. The concert was a benefitin support of African liberation, with the proceeds going to the AfricanNational Congress in South Africa and other such movements (theconcert is said to have raised a quarter of a million dollars for the cause).It is widely regarded as one of the greatest performances of Marley’scareer. According to Garry Steckles, a recent biographer, it was there thatMarley first hinted at what was to become ‘‘Redemption Song’’:

[The concert] was unusual in that he even delivered a speech, something he almost

never did, maintaining that he said everything he had to say in his songs, and that

if people didn’t get the message from them they weren’t about to get it anyway. In

the course of the speech, the mesmerized audience were the first people to hear the

words many regard as Bob Marley’s greatest, and which were to be the basis for the

Fig. 2. Poster of Amandla concert, Boston, July 1979.

6. Chris Salewicz, BobMarley: The Untold Story(New York: Faber andFaber, 2009), 377.

202 Review: Literature and Arts of the Americas


still-to-be-written ‘‘Redemption Song’’: ‘‘Emancipate yourself from mental slavery;

none but ourselves can free our minds.’’7

Before he gave utterance to those words, the sentiment had obviouslybeen building within him. It would continue to gestate for a while longerbefore finding its truest expression. Then, in November 1979, ‘‘in thenearly empty Roxy nightclub on Sunset Strip [in Los Angeles], the Wailersheld a three-hour rehearsal for that night’s show to benefit the Sugar RayRobinson Foundation.’’ Stephen Davis reports:

As the session wound down, the Wailers played a twenty-minute version of the new

‘‘Redemption Songs.’’ If Bob was thinking of playing the new song’s debut at the

show that night, he changed his mind later. ‘‘Redemption Songs’’ would remain a

secret for another few months.8

For reasons that are unclear, Marley was hesitant to release the song tothe public. Perhaps he was unsure of how it would be received. He mayhave also been saving it for the right moment. The occasion finallycame when Chris Blackwell requested additional material for the Uprisingalbum. It was time to hit Blackwell with the song.

These are the facts as I have gleaned them from the published sourceson Marley’s life. What they depict is the halting evolution of ‘‘RedemptionSong,’’ but they don’t shed light on what inspired the song or the origin ofthose famous lyrics:

Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery;

None but ourselves can free our minds . . .

However, in a conversation in Jamaica in 2001 with Rex Nettleford,then Vice-Chancellor of the University of the West Indies, a casualreference was made to the origin of Marley’s famous lyrics. I had takenStanley Nelson, director of the documentary film Marcus Garvey: Look forMe in the Whirlwind, to meet Nettleford to discuss with him the meaningof Garvey for Jamaica and the wider world. Midway through the meeting,Nettleford turned and, looking toward me, said: ‘‘Bobby, of course, youknow that Marley’s ‘Redemption Song’ was taken from a speech by Garveyin Canada . . .’’ Actually, I had not heard that attribution made prior tothe meeting. Nettleford simply assumed that I knew it, as a life-longscholar of Garvey’s life and work. He made it sound as if the connectionwas indisputable.

Immediately upon returning to America, I set about to examineGarvey’s speeches in Canada in the thirties. The texts of his speeches werecontained in The Black Man, Garvey’s final publication betweenDecember 1933 and February 1939. Over a span of years I had graduallysucceeded in collecting the entire run of The Black Man and, in 1975,I compiled and published the collection with an extensive introduction

7. Garry Steckles, BobMarley: A Life(Northampton, Mass.:Interlink Books, 2009),172. Steckles’sassessment that‘‘Redemption Song’’represents ‘‘thesongwriting apex of BobMarley’s career’’ (175)forms part of what isnow a consensus amongauthors.

8. Davis, Bob Marley, 220.



(The Black Man: A Monthly Magazine of Negro Thought and Opinion[Millwood, New York: Kraus-Thomson Organization, 1975]).

As I browsed the texts, I came upon the speech that Garvey delivered inSydney, Nova Scotia, in October 1937. Entitled ‘‘The Work That Has BeenDone,’’ the location of the speech was listed as Menelik Hall [fig. 3], aname that would have caught Bob Marley’s attention with his keeninterest in all things Ethiopian. Menelik was the great emperor of Ethiopiaand the military leader who had defeated the Italian army at the historicBattle of Adwa in 1896. As a culture hero par excellence to black people inthe West, the Great Menelik was the direct precursor to Haile Selassie inthe estimation of Ras Tafarians. After retrieving The Black Man volumeand reading this particular speech, I found the passage that Nettleford hadalluded to in the conversation. Garvey says in the speech:

Fig. 3. Marcus Garvey. Broadsheet of October 1937 speech at Menelik Hall, Nova Scotia.



We are going to emancipate ourselves from mental slavery because whilst others

might free the body, none but ourselves can free the mind . . .9

Now compare Garvey’s words with the lyrics that Marley sings in‘‘Redemption Song’’:

Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery;

None but ourselves can free our minds . . .

I confess that the irony of the situation was not lost on me. AlthoughI had been responsible for republication of The Black Man, I hadmissed the clear resonance of Garvey’s speech in Bob Marley’s final‘‘Redemption Song.’’ It was left to Rex Nettleford to make me finally awareof it!

Moreover, speaking in Windsor, Ontario, in September 1937, just ashort time before the speech he delivered in Menelik Hall in Nova Scotia,Garvey reiterated the ideal of ‘‘African redemption.’’ He declared:

We of the UNIA are no watermelon babies. We are men standing erect and looking

God in the face and speaking as men. When we talk of African redemption the

watermelon Negro thinks we are mad, but the serious Negro understands.10

During the 1920s, Garvey’s UNIA (Universal Negro ImprovementAssociation) was known as the movement of ‘‘African Redemption.’’ Togive but one example, Garvey, speaking at Liberty Hall in New York, inAugust 1922, announced to his audience:

The power that holds Africa is not divine. The power that holds Africa is human,

and it is recognized that whatsoever man has done man can do. Until God takes

possession of Africa THERE IS NO IMPOSSIBILITY in the redemption of Africa

by the 400,000,000 Negroes of the world, and God has not yet taken possession of

Africa. The Englishman is in possession of Africa, the Frenchman is in possession

of Africa and the Italian is in possession of Africa. The English, French and Italians

are men. What are you? (Cries of ‘‘Men.’’) If you are men how dare anyone say that

Africa cannot be redeemed when we have 400,000,000 men who are determined to

fight for the redemption of Africa? The redemption of Africa is going to be a

SPIRITUAL AS WELL AS A PHYSICAL ONE.11

The ideal of redemption thus enunciated in ‘‘Redemption Song’’ hadbeen well inculcated by Marcus Garvey. What ‘‘Redemption Song’’expressed, in my opinion, was but the extension in the present of thepolitical and cultural ideal that Garvey had pioneered and promulgated inthe twenties and thirties.

Where did Marley find The Black Man volume that contained Garvey’s1937 speech in Nova Scotia? That was now the question. Ironically, onceagain, the answer actually lay at hand*much closer than I could haveimagined.

9. Marcus Garvey, ‘‘TheWork That Has BeenDone,’’ Menelik Hall,Sydney, Nova Scotia,Canada, The Black Man,vol. 3, no. 10 (July 1938):10.

10. ‘‘Marcus GarveyAddressing The Peopleof Detroit*TremendousCrowd Came To Canadato Hear Him,’’ The BlackMan, vol. 2, no. 8(December 1937): 9!12.

11. Robert A. Hill, ed., TheMarcus Garvey andUniversal NegroImprovement AssociationPapers, Vol. 4 (Berkeleyand Los Angeles:University of CaliforniaPress, 1985), 846.



This part of the story dates to the spring of 1976 and is set in Chicago

when Bob Marley performed there on his second U.S. tour. At the time, Iwas teaching at Northwestern University and living in the suburb of

Evanston, just north of the city. Don Taylor, Bob’s manager, contacted meto invite me to the concert. I had known Don Taylor from the late fifties,

when he worked as a baggage handler for the artists whom my fatherbrought to perform in Jamaica. As Taylor recounts in Marley and Me,

‘‘[D]uring the late fifties Stephen Hill*a medium-height, sharp-featuredbrown Jamaican like myself*had the reputation of being Jamaica’sleading impresario. With his wife Dorothy, Hill had been the Jamaican

pioneer of show promotions. He had brought to the island artistesranging from classical pianist Arthur Rubinstein and opera singer Marian

Anderson to popular performers such as Nat King Cole, Billy Eckstine,and Cab Calloway*a truly remarkable achievement.’’12 Along the way,

Don befriended Little Anthony, of Little Anthony and the Imperials,during their performances in Jamaica in November-December 1961.

Shortly after their visit, Taylor left for the U.S. and gradually worked hisway up to managing the group.13

Taylor met Bob Marley for the first time when Marvin Gaye came toJamaica to perform a benefit concert, in March 1974, for the Trench Town

Sports Complex. The concert was promoted by my brother, Stephen Hill,Jr., on behalf of the Trench Town Sports Foundation. The Wailers opened

the program*and totally ‘‘mashed it down.’’ Marvin Gaye’s performance,which was to be the highlight of the show, proved anticlimactic and paled

by comparison in terms of audience reception. Bob Marley and his grouphad lit a fuse in the Jamaican psyche that night. Taylor, who had

accompanied Gaye to Jamaica and was present at the concert, was stunnedboth by the electrifying performance and by the ecstatic response of theaudience. The next day, Taylor promptly sought out Marley to introduce

himself and propose to Marley that he become his manager.14 By thistime, both Taylor and my father were in regular communication. Bob

Marley was ‘‘breaking’’ in America and Marvin Gaye, who had now comeout of retirement, was being toured by my father and breaking attendance

records across the country.At the conclusion of Marley’s concert in Chicago, I went backstage to

meet Taylor and to thank him for the tickets. Marley’s performance was arevelation to me and I told Taylor that I had something that I wanted him

to give to Marley as a gift and a token of my appreciation and respect.Taylor said he would be happy to oblige. The next day, I sent via Don

Taylor a copy of The Black Man inscribed to Bob Marley.I never thought anything more about my encounter in Chicago in

1976, until Professor Nettleford suggested to me, in 2001, that the lyrics of‘‘Redemption Song’’ were taken from Marcus Garvey’s speech at Menelik

Hall in Nova Scotia. Had Marley encountered them in browsing throughthe copy of The Black Man that I sent him as a gift?

12. Don Taylor and MikeHenry, Marley and Me:The Real Bob MarleyStory told by his managerDon Taylor (New York:Barricade Books, 1995),25.

13. Ibid., 54!57.

14. Ibid., 61!65. With acouple of exceptions, theartists whom Tayloracknowledges and creditsin his memoir asinstrumental in his rise(‘‘the R & B family of1958 to 1968’’) wereperformers brought toJamaica by my father*Lloyd Price, Ben E. King,Chuck Jackson, JackieWilson, The Shirelles,The Drifters, LittleAnthony and theImperials, Patti La Belleand the Blue Belles, etc.



If this is how it happened, the story points to an important moral.Redemption is not simply our destiny. It is work*redemption works*thatis the product of dispersed networks of belonging that bind us as people.Looking back today, the confluence of events that have been narrated hereis a fulfillment of what Bob Marley invites us to join in, when he sings*

Won’t you help to sing?

These songs of freedom . . .



redemption song (a review)

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