For many of Peter Tosh’s fans and admirers, the slender 6′ 1” musician struck a striking figure. He was an extremely stirring composer, an audacious lyricist, inventive musician, extraordinary vocalist, and a rousing performer. His songs — mostly narratives of resistance, optimism and heroism — were delivered with impeccable diction and a vocal range that allowed his lyrics to be at once daring and poignant. Had Tosh — born Winston Hubert McIntosh — not died at 43 years of age, on September 11, 1987, he would be celebrating his 74th birthday on October 19 this year, along with many of his fans, admirers and associates.

For those of us who knew him well, not only will we celebrate his militancy, but he will also be invoked for his complex personal appeal, including his jovial personality and innocent playfulness — especially with animals, such as his pet parrot, Freddie, along with his collection of toys and some rather interesting gizmos, among other things like his crystal ball, African amulets, unicycle, skateboards, and his collection of sling shots. Balancing his light-heartedness, he will also be celebrated for his deep spiritual belief, moral principles, political consciousness and, above all, his militant pan-Africanist advocacy for social revolution and equal rights and justice for all.

From his youthful days, Peter Tosh learned to recognise and defend moral values and human dignity from the elders in his rural community of Westmoreland. Addressing his relationship to others, he told Roger Steffens and Hank Holmes in the summer of 1980, “I never think that I should hurt a man, that’s the way I was born and raised, that’s the way I grew; that’s the way I feel within myself, I don’t think that I should hurt nothing that has life, seen.” ( liverightloveright.wordpress.com/2015/10/15/reasoning-with-peter-tosh-1980/)

Throughout his life, Peter Tosh tried to capture what was really happening globally in order to better understand and comment on what, in his estimation, was at the centre of humanities inequity. He developed a voracious appetite for knowledge. Reading and reasoning led to a profound interest in African and black diaspora arts, philosophy and heritage, including the unequal treatment of black people in Africa and its diasporas.

He concluded it was the exploitation by the West of peoples they enslaved and countries they colonised, so called Third World countries, including Jamaica, that was at the root of black people’s disenfranchisement and poverty, in spite of the abundant natural resources they possessed. He argued in interviews, speeches from the stage, and through his music, that the exploitation of Africa and black people built Western nations.

He was adamant, in songs like Equal Rights and Apartheid, that the core cause was the system of slavery, colonialism and a structure of institutionalised racial segregation, coupled with the West’s robbery of valuable natural resources. All this resulted in hunger and social death — living dead and duppies, as he usually said — among peoples of Africa and the black diaspora.

As an advocate and artist, Peter Tosh considered himself a displaced African on a mission to mend the exploitation of Africa and Black people. He conceptualised Africa as a state of mind; hence, he could live out his Africanisms without ever going there. At the same time, he related to the land of his forbearers in its reality, appreciating Africa as a geographical space; a great continent blessed with magnificent history, majesty and tradition. Yet, he also believed Africa and blacks were beset with the residual effects of Western exploitation and manipulation, which produced separateness and disunity, resulting in poverty, ethnic conflict, corruption, oppression and mayhem. He often declared, “Africa is the richest place and black people are the poorest race.”

Although he largely identified with Africa, Peter Tosh loved Jamaica, which he dubbed, “Jahmekyah”. He considered the island of his birth a piece of Africa afloat in the Caribbean, or as he called it “Carrybeyond”. He believed the transatlantic slave trade was an attempt to psychologically cut the umbilical cord to “Mama Africa”. His response to that tragic dislocation was to address Africa’s historic, social and cultural significance. He also encouraged an African identity that could establish and strengthen solidarity and unity among all people of African descent. As he put it in one song:

“You better come together

Learn to love one another

We got to come together

Learn to love one another

We got to come together

Learn to love your brother

We got to come together

Learn to love your sister”

Or consider African —another of the many compositions that convey a pan-Africanist awareness:

Don’t care where you come from

“As long as you’re a black man,

You’re an African

Never mind your nationality

You have got the identity of an African

If your ‘plection high, high, high

If your ‘plection low, low, low

If your ‘plection in-between

You’re an African”

These lyrics clearly demonstrate his views on African solidarity, unity and identity. They suggest an Afro-Jamaican and diasporic relationship to Africa. And in true pan-Africanist ideology, it also emphasises that the future and fortune of all African peoples and countries are interconnected.

Not merely set on romanticising Africa, Peter Tosh also addressed the realities of the continent’s contemporary problems by highlighting the issues that plagued it. For example, he abhorred and resisted the system of slavery, imperialism, colonialism, apartheid and poverty that plagued Africa which he vowed to fight to resist through songs like Not Gonna Give It Up:

I’m not gonna give it up, I’m not goin’

I will be fighting

I’ve got to be fighting

I will be fighting

‘Til Africa and Africans are free

Above all, Peter Tosh dedicated himself to the physiological and political freedom of Africa and its peoples and articulated his commitment in both word and deed. During the apartheid era, and before many of his fellow artistes knew its meaning and implications, he took a stance against the white supremacist governments of South and South West Africa and their Western allies. He openly supporting the African Nationalist Congress (ANC) and the South West African Peoples Organization (SWAPO) resistance movements and wrote and recorded powerful songs such as Four Hundred Years, Equal Rights and Apartheid demonstrating his commitment to black liberation.

With reference to slavery and colonialism, Four Hundred Years underlines his keen observation of the residual effects from political and racial subjugation. He questions the treatment of black youth and urged them to resist. He summoned them to, “Come with me to a land of liberty, where we can live a good, good life and be free.”

He sings: “ It has been 400 years and it’s the same philosophy; 400 years and the people they still can’t see,

Why do they fight against the youth of today?

And without youths, you would be gone… all gone astray.”

To achieve maximum impact, he used sound effects at the start of Apartheid to assimilate automatic gunfire, chaos, fright, and fighting, he sings:

“Yu Inna me land quite illegal

You inna me land dig out me gold, yeah

Inna me land digging out my pearls

Inna me land dig out me diamonds

We a go fight, fight, fight

Fight ‘gainst apartheid

We gotta fight, fight, fight

Fight ‘gainst apartheid”

Peter Tosh talked direct; he took no prisoners. He addressed the situation as he saw it and he supported his mission with his own money. He performed on many anti-apartheid concerts without taking a fee, at times paying from his own pocket unyielding band members who refused to give their talents for the cause.

During our European tour in 1978, while in Brussels, Belgium, I purchased two copies of the Broderbund ( Brotherhood) — a book which provided a background to the origins and implementation of the apartheid system — which I shared with him so we could have a better understanding of apartheid. We also kept ourselves abreast of the various liberation struggles, their supporters and detractors, and he energetically engaged anyone sharing his opinion or disagreeing in lively debates on the subject.

Peter Tosh was not afraid of being on the front line. In 1967, he was arrested outside the British High Commission in Kingston protesting Ian Smith’s takeover of the former Rhodesia, now the South West African state of Zimbabwe. Songs such as African, Mama Africa, and I Am Going Home, are examples of his recorded reactions about Africa and its liberation.

An admirer of Dr Walter Rodney, the banned Africanist lecturer, from whose community reasoning he learned more about Africa, Peter Tosh got involved in the 1968 demonstration-turned-riot protesting Rodney’s banning by the Jamaican Government. As if guided by the anthem, “Get Up, Stand Up” he co-wrote with Bob Marley, urging oppressed peoples the world over to stand up for their rights, he commandeered a bus during the unrests and drove it into a commercial establishment allowing protesters to have their fill before driving them back to West Kingston.

His revolutionary spirit, communal solidarity, and feminist consciousness are also foregrounded in the song Fight On:

“Africa has got to be free

Fight on brothers, fight on

Fight on and free your land

Fight on sisters, fight on

Fight on and free your fellow man

And in a brilliant transformation of that old Negro spiritual Sinnerman to Downpressorman, Peter Tosh probingly confronted the downpressors:

“Downpressor man, where you gonna run to?

Downpressor man, where you gonna run to?

Downpressor man, where you gonna run to?

All along that day”

Impatient of any peaceful means to achieving equal rights and justice under the overt apartheid system in places like South Africa, the racially segregated North America, the subtle discrimination suffered in Europe and England, and the class prejudice and favouritism that exists in places like Jamaica and the Caribbean, Peter Tosh used songs like Equal Rights to signal his response to those he considered the upholders of such systems, the oppressors:

“Everyone is crying out for peace, yes

None is crying out for justice

Everyone is crying out for peace, yes

None is crying out for justice

I don’t want no peace

I need equal rights and justice

I need equal rights and justice

I need equal rights and justice

Got to get it

Equal rights and justice “

From the opening lines of Equal Rights, “Everyone is crying out for peace, none is crying out for justice,” Tosh powerfully encapsulates the mood and frustration of those facing brutal discrimination, in some instances, and systemic injustices in others. Thus, while lyrically he demanded equal rights, the symbolic message conveyed by his rapid-fire rhythm guitar riffs, especially after acquiring his M16 model, suggested he was also prepared for armed struggle and he was ready for the revolution.

Peter Tosh’s revolutionary pan-Africanist image is generally known, though too often not taken seriously or really understood. Even during this month of his birth, as we celebrate his life — and that of Walter Rodney’s and the heroes of the Morant Bay Rebellion — he remains a grossly under-appreciated, under-represented, misunderstood ,and taken for granted artiste. For too many he was a belligerent individual overshadowed by Bob Marley, with whom he and Bunny (Wailer) Livingstone co-founded the Wailers. Yet, in my mind, Winston Hubert McIntosh, aka Peter Tosh, Mystic Man and the Bush Doctor, was simply extraordinary. He was not only an extremely complex human being, but, like Paul Robeson, he was also one of the 20th century’s most important, powerful, perceptive, astute, and committed human rights advocates, and a powerful socially conscious political artist. In addition, he was remarkably lyrical, superbly musically and an exceptionally entertaining performer. Capping it all, Tosh was a staunch advocate of race pride, who believed there should be no peace until there was equal rights and justice for all

The most important honour we can accord the revolutionary pan-Africanist Peter Tosh, each birthday, is to pledge to keep the struggle for equal rights and justice alive. We must teach our youth to get up and stand up for human rights and justice; don’t give up the fight. We must encourage them to hold aloft the flag of human dignity, cultivate an African identity, encourage black unity; continue the struggle for liberation, reparation, self-respect, self-determination, and love for humanity.

Like his idols, Malcolm X and Che Guevara, complete freedom was an ideal Peter Tosh eventually believed should be achieved by any means necessity; through peaceful methods or by revolution. In an interview, he once said, “If I wasn’t a singer I would be a bl..dc…t’ revolutionary.”

Herbie Miller is director/curator of the Jamaica Music Museum. He is a sociomusicologist who focuses on the social aspects of musical performance and the exploration of the sociocultural context of music in society. He was Peter Tosh’s personal manager from 1976 to 1981. Send comments to the Observer or herbimill.hm@gmail.com.