Brown Boy Blues

(excerpted from the chapter in Authentic Blackness/”Real” Blackness: Essays on the Meaning of Blackness in Culture and Literature, ed. Martin Japtok & Jerry Rafiki (Peter Lang, 2011).)

“No one screams about Babylon more than a brown boy.”
(Participant in an on-line forum about Damian Marley & “brown boys” in Jamaican culture).  Read more... (4629 words)

The “Real Revolutionary’s” Guide to Bob Marley’s Star

Bob Marley

First published in 2001, this piece was written by Gregory Stephens for Jahworks.org. On the anniversary of Bob Marley’s birth, it made sense to re-publish.  Read more... (1516 words + 3 images)

A “Second Emancipation” Transfigured? Reflections on Bob Marley at 60

2/8/05

“We must create a second emancipation–an emancipation of our minds.”
Marcus Garvey, 1929 anniversary of Emancipation in the English speaking Caribbean1

“Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery/ none but ourselves can free our minds.”
Bob Marley, “Redemption Songs,” 1980  Read more... (4059 words + 4 images)

Coleccion Romantica: Translating Juan Luis Guerra’s Language of Love

“Colección Romántica”

Juan Luis Guerra [Karen 2000]

[NOTE: Parts of the following essay come from a chapter originally commissioned (but then cut) by Rebecca Walker for a book she edited, What Makes a Man: 22 Writers Imagine the Future (Riverhead Books, 2005).]

INTRODUCTORY SKETCH OF THE ALBUM AND ARTIST  Read more... (3623 words + 3 images)

Forever Milking Bob, Continued

FOREVER MILKING BOB, CONTINUED

A review essay by Gregory Stephens

Rita 

Marley with Hettie Jones, No Woman No Cry: My Life With Bob Marley

(Hyperion, May 2004)

Hank 

Bordowitz, ed., Every Little Thing Gonna Be Alright: The Bob Marley

Reader (Da Capo Press/ Perseus, July 2004)

Reading these latest additions  Read more... (3551 words + 2 images)

Projections and Erections

As soon as I got home internet access the sexual spam began: endless ads offering pills to enlarge my penis, and varieties of black market Viagra and latter-day rhino horn potions. There was also the occasional ad offering various means of increasing breast size.  Read more... (1239 words)

Coffee Table Bob Marley – Two New Views of Bob Marley and the Wailers

 

BOB MARLEY & PETER TOSH, Get Up! Stand Up!
(Diary of a Reggaeophile)
by Fikisha Cumbo
[Brooklyn: CACE International, 2002]

One Love: Life With Bob Marley and the Wailers
Words & Photographs by Lee Jaffe; Introduction & Interview by Roger Steffens
[New York: Norton, 2003]

Two new books about Bob Marley and the Wailers follow the template established by  Read more... (3201 words + 2 images)

A Luciano Retrospective

3/19/04

LUCIANO CDS REVIEWED

Visions (Charm/Jet Star/Sting Ray, 2003)

Tell it From the Heart (Minor7 Flat5/Al.Ta.Fa.An, 2003)

Ultimate Collection (Hip-O Records, 2003)

Serve Jah (VP Records, 2003)

Sizzla & Luciano, Jah Warrior (Penitentiary Records, 2003/2004)

   Read more... (4412 words + 10 images)