blugiant, mi tink u do Bob a disservice wen u

[Q3210]

Re: blugiant, mi tink u do Bob a disservice wen u

Yes Loops, Cant imagine why Cosby would have used such a pale faced Black woman in his cast just to attract more viewers.
After all Bob wasn`t as `pale` as she is.

{God please give me knowledge to understand why this is even considered a topic worthwhile to even think about.}

[blugiant]

Re: blugiant, mi tink u do Bob a disservice wen u

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" I don't come down pon the Black man's side NOR the White man's but pon God's side...de one who cause me to come from Black & White"...Bob Marley.

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"I don't have prejudice against myself. My father was a white and my mother was black. Them call me half-caste or whatever. Me don't dip on nobody's side. Me don't dip on the black man's side nor the white man's side. Me dip on God's side, the one who create me and cause me to come from black and white.".......bob marley

[Scotch]

Re: blugiant, mi tink u do Bob a disservice wen u

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oono realee tink dat bob maddar being blakk ann imm faddar being mzungu wass natt part aff oww imm wass marketed too mzungu

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Kind of a strange stealth marketing strategy, considering that I'd already owned several Bob Marley records before I found out. I think I read it in "Reggae Bloodlines", by the way.

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itt like blakk peeps buyinn aunt jeminaa nd uncle ben widdout seeinn da racism. sealth marketinn ar narmal racist sinting

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You don't appear to grasp the implications of this "stealth marketing". If no one knows and you don't advertise Marley's mixed parentage, it ain't a-gonna do you any good. No one in his right mind would adopt such a "strategy". It's called s-a-r-c-a-s-m. Got it? (Was Aunt Jemima's daddy white too?)

[Scotch]

Re: blugiant, mi tink u do Bob a disservice wen u

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eida way, mi still no see where Bob's light complexion was his selling point seeing that Europe is where he made it first....matter of fact, most american blacks loved Europe for their embrace of the darker shade as opposed to america,both black an white upholding the lighter shade of pale wen it came to blacks...

and again i say, despite his pale complexion, Bob's cosmetic choices did nothing to appeal to americans...if afro was seen as militant how u tink dem did view locks not to mention a man speaking in a dialect with no attempts to roun' up him mout....c'mon man ....

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Actually, I think Americans ate that stuff up. Not all Americans, of course, but enough--plenty.

I went through my old Bob Marley vinyl record covers today and discovered why I’d never noticed he had (supposedly) relatively light-colored skin. Everybody’s (the whole group’s, that is) skin on the covers of “Exodus” and “Burnin’ ” is the color of the backdrop, gold in the former case and a sort of wood color in the latter case. The cover of “Natty Dread” has a painting of Marley, not an especially good likeness, and the artist has taken the liberty of making Marley darker than he apparently was. The back cover of “Natty Dread” has Marley suffused in orange light. All his exposed skin is orange; his shirt is orange; his guitar is orange; his hair is orange. And so on.

Bear in mind that these are the original Island vinyl releases. Internet or even CD booklets may be discolored, and, in any case, the vinyl disc covers are big and easy to study. Since Marley’s death many compilation recordings have been released with various covers, and they are beside the point I want to make. The point I want to make is that if there was any marketing strategy in regard to Marley’s skin color (and I certainly don’t know that there was), it would seem to be precisely the reverse of the strategy blugiant complains of, and that actually makes a hell of a lot more sense. Let’s admit it: At least half of reggae’s original appeal to young white middle-class Americans had to do with its foreignness. The less Marley looked, talked, and acted like a typical white middle-class American, the better for sales. It is a testimony to the true worth of Marley’s recordings that decades later, after the exotic appeal--the novelty--has long worn off, that they are still selling; they endure.

[evanovitch]

Re: blugiant, mi tink u do Bob a disservice wen u

darker than he really was is relative ...i look at the same vinyl jacket an i see a tanned jamaican who spent a heck of lot of time in the sun as a result of his veddy outdoor lifestyle.....being poor at the time Bob was the epitome of an outdoor yaadie....di tenement was ongle fi sleep so to speak...plus the white americans found the writing style of Bob to be ala Bob Dylanish, their point of reference if u would, the beat of the music hypnotic inkeeping wid their weed smoking of the time....the album jackets at the time were wikked, inkeeping with the atmosphere of the decades, case in point this beautiful top opening lighter album cover of Burning....one of these days i am gwine to offer it on Ebay to see what it is priced as a collector's item...

anyway i mainly refer to Bob's continued efforts to woo his black american counterparts and it is their evaluation of his cosmetics because in keeping wid lighter shade being favoured at the time, cosmetic advertising should have worked with the ones who had the money to spend on or champion the 'exotic' ala Belanfonte, Kitt etc etc etc

[Scotch]

Re: blugiant, mi tink u do Bob a disservice wen u

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darker than he really was is relative

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Certainly. That's the way "er" adjectives work, and, for that matter, no one is really either black or white, and few biologists nowadays recognize the term "race" as having any tangible meaning.

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...i look at the same vinyl jacket an i see a tanned jamaican who spent a heck of lot of time in the sun as a result of his veddy outdoor lifestyle.....being poor at the time Bob was the epitome of an outdoor yaadie....di tenement was ongle fi sleep so to speak

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What album jacket? "Natty Dread" 's? It's a painting.

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...plus the white americans found the writing style of Bob to be ala Bob Dylanish, their point of reference if u would

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As a "white" (whatever that may mean) formerly middle-class, formerly young, American, formerly a fairly large fan of Bob Dylan, I beg to differ. They shared a first name, and their last names were similar sounding, but that's pretty much where the resemblance ends. The only Marley song that sounds remotely to me like Dylan of old is "Songs of Freedom". (Dylan: "And we gazed upon the chimes of freedom flashing.") No, I think if you're going to compare Marley to a famous white "folkish" pop singer of the approximate period, you'd do better to invoke Cat Stevens (who was slightly exotic himself). Imagine "Moon Shadow" with a reggae beat: "And if I ever lose my hon'/Natty dreadlock, Rasta mon...."

[evanovitch]

Re: blugiant, mi tink u do Bob a disservice wen u

so because it is a painting dem cyan depict his tanness....

an of course the fact that Dylan wrote message songs ala Bob...u know the era of protest etc etc etc etc....

my apologies for not being more expansive...or is it explicit...

[Scotch]

Errata

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The only Marley song that sounds remotely to me like Dylan of old is "Songs of Freedom".

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Sorry, that should be "Redemption Song" (which includes the phrase "songs of freedom").

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They shared a first name, and their last names were similar sounding, but that's pretty much where the resemblance ends.

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Although Bob Dylan's real last name is Zimmerman.

[Scotch]

Re: blugiant, mi tink u do Bob a disservice wen u

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so because it is a painting dem cyan depict his tanness....

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Since it's a painting, you can interpret it how you like, I suppose. It didn't occur to me to interpret it thus.

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an of course the fact that Dylan wrote message songs ala Bob...u know the era of protest etc etc etc etc....

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Earlier in his career Bob Dylan sang social protest songs, later he sang what might be characterized as existential protest songs, and by the late sixties and early seventies he was extolling the virtues of family life down on the farm--or something. Social protest songs were a salient part of the "folk revival" of the late fifties and early sixties that Pete Seeger helped to inaugurate, partly by mythologizing Woody Guthrie (or, more accurately, mythologizing Woody Guthrie's self-mythologizing). One important difference between these social protest songs and Marley's is that the folk revivalists were ostensibly protesting on behalf of others and Marley was ostensibly protesting on behalf of himself or his own people--black Jamaicans (although he got more expansive--to steal your term; sorry--on "Survival" with "Zimbabwe" and so on). While the "liberalism" of the social protest audience might have made it sympathetic to Marley's protesting, this audience would still regard Marley differently, from without.

[evanovitch]

Re: blugiant, mi tink u do Bob a disservice wen u

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so because it is a painting dem cyan depict his tanness....

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Since it's a painting, you can interpret it how you like, I suppose. It didn't occur to me to interpret it thus.

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an of course the fact that Dylan wrote message songs ala Bob...u know the era of protest etc etc etc etc....

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Earlier in his career Bob Dylan sang social protest songs, later he sang what might be characterized as existential protest songs, and by the late sixties and early seventies he was extolling the virtues of family life down on the farm--or something. Social protest songs were a salient part of the "folk revival" of the late fifties and early sixties that Pete Seeger helped to inaugurate, partly by mythologizing Woody Guthrie (or, more accurately, mythologizing Woody Guthrie's self-mythologizing). One important difference between these social protest songs and Marley's is that the folk revivalists were ostensibly protesting on behalf of others and Marley was ostensibly protesting on behalf of himself or his own people--black Jamaicans (although he got more expansive--to steal your term; sorry--on "Survival" with "Zimbabwe" and so on). While the "liberalism" of the social protest audience might have made it sympathetic to Marley's protesting, this audience would still regard Marley differently, from without.

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mmmm...that one word 'ostensibly' is not enuff .....they were protesting on their own behalf for a way of life that they wanted to see enacted....whether it was equity in society etc etc, the overall cumulative effect would include them....

and again, protest songs should not have this distinction....it is that thinking that has people associating the civil rights movement in this country primarily with blacks....i.e. say civil rights and the first picture drawn is of the black struggle....that is why MLK's birthday is still not a NATIONALLY celebrated holiday....left to choice as to whether u get off work or not

[Scotch]

Re: blugiant, mi tink u do Bob a disservice wen u

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mmmm...that one word 'ostensibly' is not enuff .....they were protesting on their own behalf for a way of life that they wanted to see enacted....whether it was equity in society etc etc, the overall cumulative effect would include them....

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Assuming they were looking at the big picture, which I suspect is something of a leap--for most of them anyway. (Neat, clever parsing, though.)

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and again, protest songs should not have this distinction

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"Should not" is different from "did not".

Anyway, I think the American "folk revival" social protesters were largely confining themselves to America, and Bob Marley, until relatively late in his career (with the "Survival" album and then "Buffalo Soldier"), was largely confining himself to Jamaica.

[dahjah]

Re: blugiant, mi tink u do Bob a disservice wen u

It is very true that when they picked the front man for the Wailers it was Bob because he was the lightest.
It was Peter who had the most talent but dem neh like de way him was inna dem face suh. Bob was just easy wid it, back in the day when dis was being put together by the powers of the industry, this was definatley their mind set of that day. To put the lighter one , the half yt one in front of all the others.

Nuff sabliminal messages to be sent deh suh tuh.

Bob was no profit atall. Anyone a wi who read de biblos adn have yeye fi si could seh dem ting deh tuh.
A messenger yes, but profit no.

[evanovitch]

Re: blugiant, mi tink u do Bob a disservice wen u

why do u and everyone else it would seem, fail to give attention to the attendant circumstances when the decision to take the Wailers international, were made.... [img]/forums/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img]

an is the pun intentional ....'profit' [img]/forums/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img]

come awn Ras, u really feel that Bob was soooooo craven for fame and fortune that he would sell out his beliefs etc etc...why then continue to big up his music etc etc if at the core of things he is a fraud, which is what it all means, when all is said and done

is eida him is a man of principle or not, and remember that he had not sold out prior to that inorder to get his music played in Jamaica....didn't to get Black America to embrace him....so why this seeming latching on by most to the idea that Bob allowed his paleness to be used to catapult him rather than his words which spoke out against that which we r asked to be believe he gave into

if that is the case, the "War" should never be played by any thinking Ras....think on that for a while....should never be allowed as an example of Bob's greatness

wat u r saying is that Bob colluded with his handlers to dupe his faith, beliefs, integrity, etc etc if he went along with their plan
OR
if u come back with his not knowing, then u r saying that in essence he was a damn fool

and trust me, Bob was never anyone's fool...even with his weakness for women , he was never a fool ...Jah bless