Who made 'One Love' Marley's signature song?
published: Thursday | February 10, 2005

Melville Cooke

I respect Bob Marley immensely; I despise the song One Love. It is a
dangerous fantasy, this business of getting together and feeling all
right. Come to think of it, it could be the theme song for an orgy.

It may be all right for other races, but for a people burdened by more
than a healthy dose of self-hate, this idea of loving everybody on an
equal footing is often a transfer of the love that we should feel for
each other.

(And, before getting to the meat of the matter), my congratulations to
the organisers of the Violence Free campaign, surrounding Bob Marley's
60th birthday on Sunday. The media, of course, picked up on the violent
incidents that occurred on the day, but the sense of hope that the
campaign engendered cannot be put on paper or captured in a sound-bite,
especially in an industry that thrives on events and not sentiment. I was
at the Marley jam in New Kingston on Sunday and when Barry Chevannes
was speaking I looked around me and read a longing for peace in the faces
of total strangers.)

It is amusing ­ and amazing ­ that we still take our cue from
foreigners. And not just any foreigner, but those dominated by white people. For
Marley did not go from Nine Miles and Trench Town to Knutsford
Boulevard as the crow flies; he detoured through the U.S., Europe, New Zealand
and other parts of the world before being officially being accorded the
status at home.

So, One Love has taken on this great significance in the wake of it
being declared 'Song of the Cen-tury' by the BBC ­ the dominant news
service in a country that has showed us no small amount of hate, by the way.
How do you choose a song of the millennium, It has been made into
Marley's signature song while Curtis Mayfield, who has writing credits, has
been disregarded.

But I am yet to read anywhere that Robert Marley told anyone that he
would like to be remembered mostly for One Love. In fact, I am yet to
read where he picked out any of his material and said 'this is I'. We are
doing a great disservice to a man who explored so many themes in his
music and spoke specifically to African issues, especially on the
'Survival' album. Those who decide what people hear on radio generally reduce
his career to the albums done for Island Records and, within these,
pick out a handful of songs such as Natural Mystic, Jammin, Is This Love
to play over and over again.

I contend that there are many more Marley songs that are relevant to
the current world situation than One Love. War is extremely apt in a
situation where the white notion of democracy is being rammed down the
throats of the willing and unwilling alike, tapped into place by a burger
or a bomb as the situation demands. And Haile Selassie is a more fitting
writer (or co-writer) than Curtis Mayfield.

Then there is the plea Africa Unite, very relevant with the attempt to
slaughter the dark-skinned people of the Darfur region in Sudan. (I
heard a piece of lunacy in a radio report, that although the events in
Darfur approximated genocide, it was not genocide. How do you nearly try
to wipe out a people, killing 70,000 and displacing over a million of
them in the process, is a mystery to me).

How about 'Wake Up and Live', in which Marley urges "rise from your
sleep and slumber/we're more than sand on the seashore/we're more than
number"? It is a call to action that can be applied to anything from
HIV/AIDS prevention to farming. It is a call to unity for more than just
'feeling alright'.

And if it must be a 'get together' song, there is Jammin, which makes
the link with the spiritual with the line "and we're jammin' in the name
of the Lord".

But 'One Love', for me, just does not do a good job and is, in fact,
the plateau that should be reached after the matters addressed in the
songs that I have mentioned have been resolved.

We are a far, far way from that.

'People, let's get together

And show our power

All over the world'

-Jimmy Cliff

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Melville Cooke is a freelance writer

Jah Guidance and Protection