Bob Marley - (Celebrities (Hardcover)) by Jason Toynbee (Hardcover)

About the Book

Sheds new light on issues such as Marley's contribution as a musician and public intellectual, how he was granted access to the global media system, and what his music means in cultural and political terms.

Book Synopsis

Is Bob Marley the only third world superstar? How did he achieve this status? In this study of one of the most influential men of the 20th century, Jason Toynbee sheds new light on issues such as Marley's contribution as a musician.

From the Back Cover

Is Bob Marley the only third world superstar? How did he achieve this unique status? In this captivating new study of one of the most influential musicians of the twentieth century, Jason Toynbee sheds new light on issues such as Marley's contribution as a musician and public intellectual, how he was granted access to the global media system, and what his music means in cultural and political terms.

Tracing Marley's life and work from Jamaica to the world stage, Toynbee suggests that we need to understand Marley first and foremost as a 'social author'. Trained in the co-operative yet also highly competitive musical laboratory of downtown Kingston, Marley went on to translate reggae into a successful international style. His crowning achievement was to mix postcolonial anger and hope with Jamaican textures and beats to produce the first world music.

However the period since his death has been marked by brutal and intensifying inequality in the capitalist world system. There is an urgent need, then, to reconsider the nature of his legacy. Toynbee does this in the concluding chapters, weighing Marley's impact as advocate of human emancipation against his marginalisation as a 'Natural Mystic' and pretext for disengagement from radical politics.

Review Quotes

"The number of issues that Jason covers is quite remarkable and the bibliography highlights the excellent research; I doubt there will be many other books written on Bob Marley which cover 19th century slave revolts, mento and nyabinghi musical styles and unemployment and police harassment in Birmingham ... I fully recommend the book to anyone who has spent any length of time listening to Bob Marley, or to anyone who has an interest in the origins and spread of reggae music."
"The Socialist"

"A smart and engaging example of what a popular music biography should look like."
Timothy Taylor, "University of California, Los Angeles

""As if infected by the sheer surprise and complexity of his music, this book makes sense of the contradictions of Bob Marley's life and work with wonderful analytic verve and an engaging display of the dogged scholarly need to understand. A tour-de-force of applied cultural theory and in itself confirmation of Bob Marley's continuing inspirational power!"
Simon Frith, "Edinburgh University"