Created in the Image of God

Just like many other processes, music evolution has its merits and shortcomings. When music evolves, it moves away from its past, from stagnation and boredom. This is the good side of music evolution. Sometimes however, music could be too hasty in moving ahead such that the fans continue to look backwards with longing.

Roots and Culture reggae, as played by Bob Marley and the other countrymen of his time, is one genre of music that was hastily thrown into the archives. That was a mistake that is currently vindicated by the continued embrace of the genre by later generation of music fans. Roots and culture has today found itself in the category of music that is referred to as classical.

The prominence of Roots and Culture over its current derivatives can be seen in the distinction it gave the small and otherwise inconspicuous Caribbean Island nation of Jamaica where it originated and travelled out to remote corners of our planet, conquering it in the process. The grandeur of this style of music also made people like Bob Marley, Peter Tosh, Eric Donaldson, Jimmy Cliff and the others who played it, demigods. Persons who play whatever is today an offspring of Reggae in Jamaica cannot boast of the reverence with which makers of Roots and Culture were held.

People who favor the bearing Reggae Music has taken today argue that the protest and confrontational temperament of Roots and Culture is old-fashioned and should not have a place in our contemporary planet. What is obvious however is that it has remained a genre of music that later generations of music fans have continued to go head-over-heels in love with the moment they discover it.

I know a man who, between the seventies and eighties, stayed in New York, the Mecca of showbiz of our planet. While in New York, he was at different times able to watch the shows of Bob Marley, Peter Tosh and Eric Donaldson. At the time that each of these reggae acts came to town, it was “like,” according to him, “God was in town.” This statement to me was a simile taken too far until i listen to “Rastafari Is” and a version of “Equal Rights” all by Peter Tosh. In these songs, there is something in his voice that seems to suggest that the messages were handed down from heaven. There is also the vocal awesomeness of Eric Donaldson and Bob Marley’s peculiar creativeness and his character of a rude boy and pastor in one. I am now able to see through the eyes of the former New Yorker.

Gen 1:27: God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.