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Redemption Song
Redemption Song
“Redemption Song”
featured on the 2001 compilation One Love: The Very Best of Bob Marley & the Wailers. However, the solo performance remains the take most familiar to listeners. In 2004, Rolling Stone placed the song at #66 among The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time.
Meaning and social impact
Unlike most of Bob Marley’s tracks, it is strictly a solo acoustic recording, consisting of Marley’s singing and playing an acoustic guitar, without accompaniment. In subsequent live performances, however, a full band is used. The song also urges listeners to "Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery," because "None but ourselves can free our minds". These lines were taken[3] from a speech given by Marcus Garvey in Nova Scotia during October 1937 as published in his Black Man magazine: We are going to emancipate ourselves from mental slavery because whilst others might free the body, none but ourselves can free the mind. Mind is your only ruler, sovereign. The man who is not able to develop and use his mind is bound to be the slave of the other man who uses his mind....[4] While the sentiment of Pan-Africanism is echoed in Redemption Song, the nationalist school of thought of the original speech by Garvey is a polar opposite of the "neo-spiritualist/integrationist" intentions of Marley.[5] Therefore, when Marley speaks of the need to ’free ourselves from mental slavery’, it is not the same mental slavery spoken of by Garvey. Mary Louise Pratt notes in the chapter of Crossing Borderlands:Composition and PostColonial Studies entitled "Arts of the Contact Zone" that "social spaces where cultures meet, clash, and grapple with each other,
Single by Bob Marley & the Wailers from the album Uprising B-side Released Genre Length Label Writer(s) Producer One Drop 1980 Folk 3:49 Island Records/Tuff Gong Bob Marley Bob Marley
"Redemption Song" is the last track on Bob Marley and the Wailers’ ninth Island music album, Uprising. At the time he wrote the song, circa 1979, Marley already had been diagnosed with the cancer that later was to take his life. According to Rita Marley, "he was already secretly in a lot of pain and dealt with his own mortality, a feature that is clearly apparent in the album, particularly in this song".[1] The song is considered Marley’s seminal work, with lyrics derived from a speech given by the Pan-Africanist orator Marcus Garvey. [2]
Recording
A full band rendition of "Redemption Song" was made available as a bonus track on the 2001 reissue of Uprising, as well as being
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often in contexts of highly asymmetrical relations of power, such as colonialism, slavery, or their aftermaths as they are lived out in many parts of the world today", and many reviewers feel that this song addresses these issues.[6]
Redemption Song
American context. For example, Mike Marqusee’s book on Muhammad Ali was called Redemption Song, as was Bertice Berry’s book about a book dealer who specialises in African American literature. A biography of Joe Strummer is also called "Redemption Song", as is a book about Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign by Niall Stanage.
Cover versions
The song has been covered by a wide and varied group of artists, from Bob Marley’s own son, Ziggy (which features Irish Folk band The Chieftains), Manfred Mann’s Earth Band and Jackson Browne to Lauryn Hill, Johnny Cash, Joe Strummer and Stevie Wonder. Redemption Song is played on a brief scene of the 2000 film the beach and over the closing credits in the 2007 movie I Am Legend. In 2009, Angelique Kidjo released a version of the song on the compilation album Oh Happy Day: An All-Star Music Celebration. [7]
References
[1] [2] [3] [4] [1] [2] [3] Black Man, Vol. 3, no. 10 (July 1938), pp. 7-11; quoted in The Marcus Garvey and Universal Negro Improvement Association Papers, Vol. VII: November 1927-August 1940; Marcus Garvey, author; Robert A. Hill and Barbara Bair, eds. [5] [4] [6] [5] [7] "Jon Bon Jovi, Queen Latifah go gospel for "Day"". Reuters. March 27, 2009. http://www.reuters.com/article/ musicNews/idUSTRE52Q6WQ20090327.
References
The title Redemption Song has been widely used also, mainly in a black, or African
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