My grandson says Bob Marley is the end all and be all of Reggae. He says with songs like “No Woman, No Cry”, “Redemption Song” and “Jammin’, there is no other Reggae and the subject was closed.
“That’s like saying Elvis invented rock and roll,” I protested. “Elvis the pelvis merely only built upon the music that went before him. All of human history is the result of each new generation extending the previous generation. Marley didn’t invent Reggae just like Elvis didn’t invent rock and roll.”
He looked at me as if I were full of crap.
“Bob Marley was only great because he built upon the works of Jimmy Cliff, the Melodians, Desmond Dekker, Scotty and especially Toots and the Maytals,” I continued. “Any creative person can only built upon the foundations they were laid for him.”
My grandson started shaking his head and laughing with self-righteousness.
“You think your generation in the be all and end all of human history,” I said.
The minute I said that I knew that statement was all TOO true because I just like him when I was his age.
He smiled and gave me one of those "I-love-you- but- you're wrong!" looks.
With that, I popped Jimmy Cliff’s “Harder They Come” into the CD player.
We listened to “Rivers of Babylon”, “Sitting in Limbo”, "Many Rivers to Cross” and “Pull the Brakes”. As we listened, I explained how the various combinations of voice and music, rhythm, harmony and melody compared to songs like “Redemption Song”, “I Shot the Sheriff”, "No Woman, No Cry" and “Jammin'”.
‘That’s some good Reggae,” he said when I finally took out the CD.
I continued by diatribe.
“Sir Isaac Newton once said: ’I have stood on the shoulders of giants…’ meaning he was who he was because he had built upon the works of Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo and others. In later years, Einstein would stand on the shoulders of Newton and all of the others who went before him. It’s like Socrates, Plato, Aristotle and Alexander the Great. Each one’s greatest is measured by how much he built upon the works of his predecessor.”
He looked at me and didn’t say anything at first.
“I don’t know much about Aristotle…” he replied apologetically.
There was a dead silence between us.
After a while, he looked over thoughtfully at me and said: ”Who did you say the other guy was?”
“What guy?”
“Cliff…,” he said. “The guy that Bob Marley built on….”
“Jimmy Cliff!” I replied quickly.
He looked at me curiously and didn’t say anything.
Maybe he learned something after all!
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