Education, economics and expression

• Tosh underrated as a teacher - Hutton, Davies, Forbes

Mel Cooke, Gleaner Writer

The three presenters at Thursday evening's Peter Tosh symposium, held at the Undercroft, University of the West Indies (UWI), Mona Campus, examined the late Stepping Razor's work from different angles.

Dr Clinton Hutton, lecturer in the Department of Government at UWI, looked at Tosh's stance on education, including the opinion of other reggae singers as well. Dr Omar Davies, opposition spokesman on transport and works, emphasised Tosh's musical virtuosity - and wryly noted his discomfiture with The Day The Dollar Die while the People's National Party (PNP) was in power. And Copeland Forbes, renowned tour manager, who declared himself 'Doctor of Reggae', regaled the audience with tales of his time in Africa with Tosh and how the Stepping Razor's experiences were translated into song.

Hutton spoke about Tosh's Can't Blame The Youth, in which he sings about the education system giving students flawed history on pirates Henry Morgan and John Hawkins, saying that each was "a very good man". He noted that Marley also sang "music gonna teach them one lesson" (in which he speaks about telling students about the cruelty and rapaciousness of Marco Polo and Christopher Columbus) and said "I am suggesting that this is the kind of education that would make a difference, a type of education that is largely missing from our schools in a philosophical sense".

Moving from learning to the ability to transform, Hutton said, "One of the things we need to be concerned with is agency, the ability of people to make things happen as sovereign beings.

"So the critique of the education system is very serious," Hutton said. Included in that critique are Marley's renowned words from Trodding on the Wine Press, where he sang about "building church and university/deceiving the people continually/me say them/graduating thieves and murderers". Tosh sang about it being "400 years and it's the same philosophy".

"We have the history of another philosophy, a liberating philosophy, but it is time to liberate that philosophy," Hutton said.

Davies pointed out a deficiency in one avenue of teaching about Tosh, the Jamaican media. He said that at an auction of his guitars for charity, actor Richard Gere fetched the highest price for one of Tosh's instruments.

"I have not seen a word of that in the media," Davies said. "I did not even know Gere knew of Tosh." Incidentally, Gere's sale of Tosh's guitar was in The Gleaner.

While Tosh is well known as a singer and writer, Davies underscored his facility with musical instruments. "If you speak with those who played with him, they recognised him as a player of instruments who also sang," Davies said. He recalled an interview with Jimmy Cliff on the night Tosh was murdered. Cliff said if you were doing a recording session and some musician did not turn up, whichever instrument was required you could call Tosh and he would turn up - expressing himself as only he did - but he would need only a couple run-throughs of the material and then he would be ready.

No trombone

Davies said footballer Allan 'Skill' Cole said the only instrument he did not see Tosh play was the trombone.

Looking at his songs, Davies noted that Tosh was concerned about issues in Jamaica prior to taking on international issues and drew a parallel with American civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. King was at the forefront of the struggle for civil rights in the United States before speaking out on America's involvement in the Vietnam War. There were those, Davies said, who thought that King was going outside the purview of civil rights. Also, when Malcolm X started to travel he acquired a broader context for his agenda. Similarly Tosh, Davies said, "building on his concern about injustices at home, realised this concern can't be restricted to Jamaica".

In this vein, Davies said, "I consider the album Equal Rights to be the strongest single CD built around a theme - Pan-Africanism and the anti-apartheid struggle". He went on to say that Tosh had reflected on injustice and "put his thought together in one CD in a very coherent way".