Four songs of freedom

Mel Cooke, Sunday Gleaner Writer

With tomorrow being Emancipation Day, we look at songs about slavery and freedom from four perspectives.

1. Redemption Song, Bob Marley: The quintessential song of freedom which, despite taking the tried-and-proven cliché route of actually having the phrase "songs of freedom" in it, certainly does not come off as corny. Marley sees no difference between himself and those who were captured on the other side of the ocean centuries before he was born, so he starts with the removal ("Ol' pirates yes they rob I/Sold I to the merchant ships"). However, after the transfer from the holding area ("Minutes after they took I/From the bottomless pit"), Marley moves into spirituality and strength and the inevitable succession of life ("We forward in this generation, triumphantly").

Then he asks for collective strength on the chorus: "Won't you help me sing, these songs of freedom/That's all I've ever had, Redemption Songs."

In the second verse, Marley leans on Garvey with the famous lines at the base of the statue in Emancipation Park, New Kingston, then puts freedom in the context of global trepidation with "have no fear for atomic energy/cause none a dem can stop Jah time".

The enduring appeal of Redemption Song is indicated by the number of YouTube hits the acoustic version, in which Marley plays a predominantly blue guitar, has received - over 13,725,000.

2. It's Amazing, Sizzla: By the time Sizzla's Da Real Thing album was released in 2002, he had been through the cycle of exciting newcomer, much-touted roots voice in an era of 'bad man' music, excellent albums and singles - and the disappointment of straying into 'slackness' and gun songs. Da Real Thing was his personal musical redemption and the song, It's Amazing, from that set, puts freedom from slavery in the context of sheer survival.

Sizzla starts at the point of forced removal ("From Africa they take us away/In the Western they slave us every day"), goes through a litany of woes ("Sold us on their plantation no need to be paid") and then hits a note of triumph ("Now I'm the light of the world"). And, in the chorus, Sizzla reflects:

"It's amazing how we never die

When the system that they set was just to slave I and I

It's amazing that we never die

It's amazing when they see the good we do to survive"

3. Never Get Weary, Toots and the Maytals: Frederick 'Toots' Hibbert is known mostly for his ska songs, but the roots reggae Never Get Weary is a heavy-hitter by any standard. In a song about personal and racial endurance in the face of persistent adversity, Hibbert puts slavery in a sweep of history that encompasses from the story of Noah to false imprisonment.

He starts: "I was down in the valley for a very long time and I never get weary yet." He soon places himself in the personae of those who have gone before him ("I was born before Christopher Columbus/And I was born before the Arawak Indians/Trodding creation, before this nation"). Then there is the call of memory in "I always remember, I can't forget".

The oblique reference to slavery, including the Africans who ended up in the Atlantic follows: "I was walking on the shore and they took me on the ship and they throw me overboard."

Still, there is hope and survival, as Hibbert rests on the Bible: "And I swam right out of the belly of the whale and I never get weary yet."

4. Repatriation, Bounty Killer: Bounty Killer's enormous technical skills as a deejay have, unfortunately, been overshadowed by his storied combats on and off the stage. And in a catalogue that spans the early 1990s bad man song Lodge to last year's affirmation Stronger, one little known track is a surprising nod to one of the central themes of freedom from slavery, the desire to return.

So, Bounty Killer deejays, "one ting inna me intention/lead the people to repatriation".