Letter to the editor I wrote, but doubt will get published

Letter to the editor I wrote, but doubt will get published. In the defence of Bob Marley for National Hero.

Dear Editor,

The arguments against Bob Marley being given the title of national hero are many and varied. However it is my view that he be given the title. Mark Wignall and Melville Cooke in their December 19 and 12, 2004 repectively and in their respective newspapers have advanced very reasonable ideas but I still disagree with them.

Wignall contends that “…weed-smoking Marley, who was a Rastaman, wrote some of the world's best pop music. There is no doubt that Marley has put Jamaica's name on the map, even more than our Olympians and the Reggae Boyz. …England, footballers and pop singers are given knighthoods. We have given Marley our local rendition of that. Let us leave it at that. The man was an entertainer.” I would like to know if he is using Marley as a weed smoker to discredit him. I would also like to contend that we have been trying to escape “England and European” standards for a very long time only to use them now to try and qualify or justify our choice in heroes and even govern our thinking or existence.

Wignall proceeds to argue that “…Matter of fact, Bob was into a bevy of women, and then of course, along came the children.” It is my understanding that we never intended to declare Marley a deity, an as such the fact that we are honouring people is acknowledge the fact that they are but men who have triumphed serious adversity and odds to excel. Marley is such a case he has triumphed poverty, a corrupt and unscrupulous music industry to bring music to people everywhere and become the voice of oppressed people everywhere.

He goes on to say “Leave Marley as the rebel he was…” but all the heroes on our national roster were rebels to one system or in one regard or the other. He being a rebel is not inconsistent with him being a hero. Marcus Garvey was no conformist or traditionalist in deed nor thought, neither was Marley.

Cooke contends Marley ought to be a Pan-African hero, and then contends Garvey is our Hero, but there is no bigger Pan-African the western hemisphere ever saw than Garvey, whose ideas do inform Marley’s, so how does Pan-African ideology discredit Marley. Also Marley never tried mass migration in the ways Garvey did. If Garvey’s vision saw fruition then there may not have been a Jamaica or a black Jamaican.

Cooke posits the argument that “Anywhere you go in the world the first thing people think of when they hear Jamaica is Bob Marley. Now that is all well and good for the Jamaica Tourist Board and the all-exclusive hotel owners, but being Jamaica's poster Rastaman does not a National Hero make.” Seeing that along with remittance that tourism is our islands biggest income earner and tourism is hinged on the wholesale prostitution of Marley in someway shape or form, then I do believe it is time our debt to this man be repaid. Even in death he is a vector in our very economy.

I believe we need another hero and more to look to. Not as deities but to inspire men that they too can be men and something more. Marley is no Messiah. He is a man that has done more than many men and their generation after will ever do for this island, “gi di man him props, stop the fighting.”