ON February 6, 1995 –the 50th birthday of Robert Nesta Marley OM — Janet L DeCosmo in a paper presented at a seminar on Bob Marley at the University of the West Indies, Mona sought to compare the Rastafari folk philosopher with David of Biblical fame.

“This paper will provide evidence….comparing Marley to King David, who loved to praise the Lord in song and dance, and who loved many women, but who was also a great warrior and leader.”

In the introduction of her paper of 15 years ago , which was reproduced in the Observer (Tuesday, February 21, 1995), DeCosmo, then a PhD student of A&M University, Florida, had noted: “In the life of ancient Israel, dancing, accompanied by song and instrumental music was a way to praise the Lord. To dance was to rejoice. Psalm 150, for example, commands one to praise God with music, and dance… Marley sang and danced in a trance-like state with his eyes closed… One might even say that, like the ancient prophets, he was possessed by the spirit of God.”

A few weeks ago, Tekla Metfet’s presentation at the annual Bob Marley lecture at UWI was in the same vein, dismissing the concept of existentialism, and linking the lyrical content of Marley to the Bible and African philosophy.

“Let me say right off, when we say Bob Marley, we acknowledge Bob Marley and the Wailers, and that many of the tunes were written in association with the others (members of the group). But what I want to say about Bob Marley in particular, I am not saying that it’s not in the others. I for one in the ’70s, identified very much with the anger of Peter Tosh. But in the fullness of the durability of Bob Marley, there is something… a sense of one’s commitment. He did not belong to himself. He had a sense of prophecy, as he said in an interview in the old Daily News on Half Way Tree Road, ‘I am not the star Jah Is The Star’.”

The Rastafari elder added: “We want to look at the way of Christ. What does this Rastaman (Bob Marley) think about the Bible? There are Rastamen who are saying, oh, there are ones who have locks, beg pardon, who are saying burn the Bible. When I and I Father tell I that the Bible is the hope for all mankind, that the Bible is the compass… we want to recognise the influence of the Bible and community in Bob Marley. We want to look at tenets of African philosophy and relate it to what Bob Marley is saying and what the Bible is saying… We want to look at Bob Marley in prophecy and I think you will be surprised that the figure of Bob Marley appears in African philosophy. Okay, lets go.”

Tekla Metfet then explained what is music in the African tradition. Music, he pointed out, records history and tells of current events. And by the use of ridicule, it’s a social control… and since music is flesh, music is like moulding pottery or weaving tapestry.

“Ambush in the Night, there’s meaning in the melody of Marley relating to Shakespeare and the share use of the imagery of darkness. ‘And if night should turn to day (now), a lot of people would run away….there’s no hiding in place from the father of creation….what goes on up is coming on down, goes around and comes around.”

According to Metfet, what you listen to is food. And so what you eat becomes you. Bob Marley’s idea of music, and the Bible’s idea of music and African tradition of music, is the whole idea of recording the distant past in the present and of social control and is a reflection of social organisation…. Africa and the Bible is at one in philosophy.

“Building church and university graduating thieves and murderers, Babylon deceiving the people continually. Ecclesiastes 5:8 tells us…’you see the oppression of the poor and the violent perversion of justice and righteousness in a province do not marvel at the matter”… Genesis 2: 10 to 13 tells us the first land mentioned in the Bible is Cush which is Ethiopia… then Africa in Isaiah 18… dwellers on the Earth see when he lift up an ensign on the mountain and when he bloweth a trumpet… Rastafari, the first trumpet might as well be the last.

“Every man has a right to decide his own destiny, and in this judgement, there’s no partiality,’ as Bob Marley sings, rallying freedom fighters of Zimbabwe, may at first sounds like a clear existentialist call. ‘We’re gonna fight, we’re gonna fight, fight for our rights.’ That right is not of an existential project towards becoming somebody by being somebody else. But it is of the right not to be as whites or as other colonial forces may desire Africans to be. That right for our destiny is to be Africans as God/Jah the creator made I in the beginning.”

Explaining existentialism comes from a mind not rooted in African ancestry as it does not embrace the concept of the existence of God. “It is most un-African,” declared Metfet before adding: “Rastafari Bob Marley in One Drop bemoans, ‘Things are not the way they used to be’. He is harping for the distant past in the present… in the anti-war call for peace in the words of His Imperial Majesty Haile Selassie I, Marley sings of needs for community, of international morality and world citizenship for collective security. In Pimpers’ Paradise he ridicules what could be seen as an existential lifestyle and commencing what could be a broadside against aspects of existentialist intent. He said, ‘Every need has an ego to feed.’ And as to the existentialist idea that God is dead, Marley declares Jah Live and Forever Loving Jah as Rastafari is Jammin in the name of the Lord, who rules all creation.”