"Rememba Moses, him no dead, him no dead, him a trod earth still. Dat man a trod earth still,"
-Peter Tosh, Remember Moses

Fourteen years before the devastation in New York City, Jamaica, and indeed the world, suffered a loss, though clearly not of the same magnitude, when reggae revolutionary Peter Tosh was brutally murdered at his home in Barbican, Kingston by gunmen. Also killed on that fateful night, was Wilton 'Doc' Brown, a herbalist friend of Tosh.

TOSH. murdered at his home on September 11, 1987

Well known broadcaster, Jeff "Free-I" Dixon (Jasi Rasi Amikabakafari) died a few days later in hospital. Also shot on that night were Tosh's spouse, Marlene Brown; Free-I's wife Joy, drummer Carlton Santa Davis and craft-worker Michael Robinson.

As Bob Marley preached his "One Love" message, Tosh railed against official hypocrisy and became a favourite target of the Jamaican police. He proudly wore the scars that he had received from the beatings he endured. His lyric "I don't want no peace, I want equal rights and justice!" would become a rallying cry for the world's downtrodden masses.

In the famous free One Love Peace Concert in 1978, first Tosh lambasted the audience, including attending dignitaries, with political demands that included legalising cannabis. He did this while smoking a spliff, a criminal act in Jamaica. Bob Marley asked both then-Prime Minister Michael Manley, and opposition leader Edward Seaga onto the stage; and a famous picture was taken with all three of them holding their hands together above their heads in a symbolic gesture of peace during what had been a very violent election campaign.

After the release of 1983 's Mama Africa , Tosh went into self-imposed exile, seeking the spiritual advice of traditional medicine men in Africa, and trying to free himself from recording agreements that distributed his records in South Africa .
He was awarded the Grammy for Best Reggae Performance in 1987 for No Nuclear War.

In more current news, the annual symposium focusing on the life and works of reggae icon, Peter Tosh, will not be held this year, but a major conference is being planned for 2007, which will also look at the role of Lee Scratch Perry in the shaping of reggae and Tosh's musical tradition.
"What we're doing in relation to Tosh and the University campus, is to plan a major conference on Lee Scratch Perry next year," University lecturer Dr Clinton Hutton told the Sunday Observer.

"Originally," he explains, "when we started the Peter Tosh annual lecture, while we have been doing Tosh all along and no one else, was to really familiarise people with Tosh. Because he is less familiar from an academic/intellectual standpoint, than say Marley. So we have been doing over the past five years the annual Peter Tosh Symposium, But also part of that mandate was to do other artistes who we figure either have had a significant impact on Tosh and his work or have developed their artistry in the tradition of Tosh.

"We have already spoken to Lee Scratch Perry and he has agreed to participate in this. We believe that Scratch is a major, major figure in the development of popular Jamaican music, in two ways, one, his work in the studio which gave rise to what is called dub, is very very important.

It has an impact on music all over the world. That's the first thing.
The second thing is in the way he developed dub and in the way he dresses. The man is not just an artiste musically, he is an artist, straight and plain. And he is tremendously creative. I spent some time interviewing him and the man is creative not just in music, but in the way he sees things generally. He is a major poineering icon of popular music.

"What we would like to do is to bring out some persons who are associated with him to be part of the conference. I myself is going to give a major presentation on his creative side, linking his work not just to music, but to the visual art. The implication of his work for the visual art which is seen in the way he dresses. Especially in relation to his type of headwear, which he makes himself."

The memorial concert in Tosh's honour, put on by King of Kings Promotions which has been going on for the past 13 years, the last three of which, have been held free, will be taking place.
"On the 21st (October), we're just going to keep another free concert in tribute to Tosh in the town of Savanna-la-Mar. We trying to present the new breed of artistes in the tradition of Peter Tosh," said Worrell King, whose King of Kings Promotions puts on the yearly event.

Born Winston Hubert McIntosh on October 9, 1944, he grew up in Kingston, where his short temper soon earned him notoriety and the nickname, Stepping Razor (the song of the same name was written by Joe Higgs).
It was through Higgs that he met with the other Wailers, Marley and Bunny in the early 1960s.

Tosh cheated death in 1973, when he suffered a fractured skull after accidentally driving his car off a bridge. His then girlfriend was killed in the accident, making it an eerie mirror of the famous Chappaquiddick incident involving US Senator Edward 'Ted' Kennedy.

Frustrated by what he felt was unfair treatment at Island Records, He left the Wailers (Bunny also left the group at this time) and began recording under the Peter Tosh moniker.
His debut solo album was 1976's Legalise It on the CBS label. Tosh has left behind a legacy cutting-edge material in such hit compositions as Coming Hot, Wanted, Dread And Alive, Mystic Man, Bush Doctor, Equal Rights, No Nuclear War, Mama Africa and The Toughest, all which are title-tracks for his many unforgetable albums.

"It was he who provided the bite to Bob Marley's bark in the original Wailers, and it was he who appeared most true to the rude boy image that the group fostered during the ska era," writes Colin Larkin in The Guinness Who's Who of Reggae.

And in his lecture president at the Bob Marley's annual symposium, Minister of Finance, Dr Omar Davies said of Peter Tosh's music: "I have carefully reviewed all of Tosh's recordings and compositions to which I have access and I have been struck at the extent to which the compositions cover the whole gamut of his life experiences - love and sex, jealousy, anger, ego, concern about injustice domestically and internationally), racial pride and religion".

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