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I can't believe this was actually on TV anywhere, but there it is. You can also find a studio version on youtube where the sound is a lot cleaner, but you don't get the visuals.

 

 

Edited by kershe
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This one feels autobiographical in a sense.

I was born and raised in poverty. I used to steal food to survive. Then I found myself, pushed myself up, and now I'm on the border of the 1%.

Damian Marley takes his son to his roots, showing where they boy's father, Robert Nesta (Bob), grew up and became a star.

If you read one of the biographies of Bob Marley - you will get to a point early in the book where his own white father abandons his mother and takes up with a mistress. Bob's white father married his mistress without divorcing his first wife, Bob's mother. There was a court battle over that - and the judge threw the 'ghetto trash black woman' out of court... Bob was later taken by his father and made a servant in the new house - basically enslaved for a time...

But the English Marleys... they've amounted to nothing. Working class English now. They rejected that ghetto boy as worthless, and he instead built a powerful family based on spreading a spiritual message around the world through popular music.

In my own life... there was even a moment where my stepfather's sister asked him to not bring me around - she didn't want a mongrel child in her home (she later got a DNA test that slapped her back on that one... she's a quarter Native American. Much to her chagrin one of her other brothers is a civil right's lawyer). Many people cast me out or pushed me down. Held me down even. But I got out from under them and rose up. And I keep strong to the family who were not blinded by hate.

(This song is a little too 'pop' for me. Damian is more 'pop music' than Stephen or Kymani. Damian is sort of reggae/hip-hop Pop music, while Ziggy has gone nearly full pop-music but also now does children's music. Kymani is more spiritual hip hop, and Stephan - who needs to put out more stuff, comes across as deeply soulful and political rastafarian in his music. Another brother Julian also has some music - but I've only heard a title or two of his and don't know him so well. The last brother Rohan is an 'American Football' player -but in Canada not NFL- turned coffee producer).

 

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For me this is the prequel to the other video, about 'getting out of the bad life' and finding a better path. This song has long felt like it was telling my story to me:

(EDIT: Found a higher resolution version).

The pixilation in this video is because the mere sight of a gun in Jamaica is considered 'extreme adult graphic content'. Unlike in the USA where we 'pleasure ourselves' to the sight of real life black people being murdered by cops on TV news... but ban a major black pop singer from TV when a white boy (who suffers no consequences) pulls down her top to expose a nipple during a halftime NFL performance... in other countries 'violence' is considered what is graphic...

Sadly Jamaica suffers from extreme gun violence ever since it's own presidential politicians (two white Jamaicans of different parties) armed rival gangs in the 1960s during election violence...

- followed by one of them later letting the CIA into the country in the 1980s to fight ganja farmers during the "drug war"... that further militarized the gangs in response...

(for a period of a few decades the same two guys traded places in the seat of power in Jamaica - both descendants of the former plantation owner class of English colonists... and while they were there they picked rival factions of the underclass and armed them, often with military grade guns, then set them loose into the other side's bases. This is why Jamaica now has such extreme laws against guns. Where mere possession can get multi-decade sentences for a first time offense)...

 

Edited by Pussycat Catnap
Found a higher resolution version
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