GLASTONBURYOFTHEMIND

This year marks the 30th Anniversary of Bob Marley’s landmark album Exodus.

In Marley’s native Jamaica 1977 was the year of reggae prophesy, the year of the two 7s clash.

That numerological phenomenom was identified on the album of the same name, Two Sevens Clash, by Joseph Hill’s VOCAL GROUP Culture - a 1977 product of Jamaica’s music scene every bit of as worthy of legendary status as Marley’s crossover masterpiece.

As a result of Hill’s album, on the 7th of July 1977 the streets of Jamaica’s capitol Trenchtown were deserted, a voluntary curfew in force as people stayed off the streets fearful that an apocalyptic reckoning was around the corner.

In the event nothing happened to warrant the panic but 1977 certainly brought a major trauma to the reggae movement for which Marley was the figurehead.

It was during that fateful year – right at the point his long sought international success was reaching a new peak – that Marley had his toe removed, in an operation to arrest the cancer which would kill him 4 years later on, gone into legend, aged 36.

The music of Marley and Jamaica remains a fascination and, at some level, a mystery.

How come an island this small – distinct from all its Caribbean neighbours – should have given the world so much in terms of rhythm, songs, feeling – why Jamaica and not St Lucia, Barbados, Antigua, Dominica or Haiti?

Actually if the music of Haiti was more widely known, was allowed to pierce the public consciousness as fully as the next simpering ballad from a Pop Idol Wanna be, the world would be a much different, I can only think better, place.

During the 70s every major  Western act – Rolling Stones, Wings, Paul Simon, Ther Police, The Clash, Steely Dan, Elton John and on and on  – adopted the distinctive JA beat to great advantage commercially.

When the upwardly mobile rich youngish white stars had their way, the Jamaican talk over style of U Roy and I Roy provided the seed from which rap - the multi million record industry saving phenomenom of the 80s and 90s - grew.

And yet so many of the Islands musical pioneers died in violence, poverty or , in the case of Marley’s early producer and sonic wunderkind Lee Perry, emigrated.

Jamaica, like Memphis – the place that gave the world Elvis Presley and much of 60s soul – seems, ultimately, to have lost out in its bargain to the wider world.

It gave so much (just ask UB40, Bono, Bob Dylan) and got so little back.

Poverty and violence there are still commonplace – the post slavery era of peace and contentment promised in song and scripture has not come. Today its music industry is a besieged cartel, many of  whose artists are prevented from travelling the  wider world because of security restrictions. And pressure groups in the UK incensed by  what they castigate as homophobic lyrics.

Yet any  music fans shelves will bulge and bustle with the fantastic sounds of Jamaica’s Masters – Big Youth, Keith Hudson, Dennis Alcapone, Gregory Isaacs, The Heptones, Susan Cadogan.

Mick Hucknall’s Fire And Blood reissue label, run by reggae historian Steve Barrow is a guaranted mark of quality. Possibly the only label in Britain that you can buy any album on its catalogue and be assured of absolutely pucker gear.

Incredibly a famous London based oldies radio station recently released a compilation album of songs from “great” labels. It is a bonkers enough idea (who listen to a label?) totally crazy when you consider that no music from original Two Tone label Trojan, Blood and Fire, Greensleeves or any other reggae label was featured.

In 2007 its good to listen back to Marley, sure t’ing. But when listening to the title track of Marley’s 30 year old masterpiece it is important to remember that this is a song about the movement of a people.

It is not, despite the deluxe CD reissue, the book and the Arena documentary that will mark its release, simply a dead celebrity fuelled event around which to make a killing.

In that regard the song was literally prophetic as the movement of people, through tears and turmoil and madness and lies and murder and despair, is a constant, as are the sweet sad truths of Waiting In Vain, Three Little Birds singing a song of love in a blessed new morning.

It is a true song also because in the 30 years since Bob wrote that bravely anthemic song a kind of passing has taken place.

Something, even if its not the  death of celebrity, is seen in the rise and fall bleach out edification vilification of the AngelDemon Jackson, the  now Beatified Smugness of The Bard of Dublin, Ballymun bred egomaniac Bono, posing as an African in Comic Relief, “representing” the poor people of Africa, Cowell’s pull the trousers up 15 minute of fame show, the fester sore on the barnacle on the arse end of the media that is Big Brother.

The focus on the person, the frontman is well,fine, but not, ultimately, where you learn and where you feel what the art, the thing that made him interesting in the first place, is about.

That is revealed right there in the heart of the music you can  listen to the music of Jamaica, not just Bob Marley. It will give you a lot particularly a  sense the country’s past hurt, present pain, future and hopes.

Exodus is a great album you can rock and swing and sing and skip lightly to.

Or you get down deep and real as you like, meditate on the truths that are as deep and old as time itself.