SBF FrankTalk

at 2/12/2016

Bob Marley born Robert Nesta Marley on 06 February was a Jamaican reggae singer, songwriter, musician and guitarist. His musical aspirations started at primary school. Marley and childhood friend Neville Livingston (later known as Bunny Wailer) started playing music together while at Stepney Primary and Junior High School.

However, Marley’s mother, Cedella Booker was uncertain about the prospects of Marley’s career and she encouraged him to take up a position as a welder’s apprentice at the age of 14. He quit several months later and took up pursuing his musical aspirations again. This led him to record several singles at the age of 16. However, these singles failed to find popular appeal and Marley was paid $20 for his work.

It was in 1963, that the band, The Wailers, consisting of Marley, Bunny Wailer, Peter Tosh and others, was born.

By the mid 60s, the jaunty ska beat had metamorphosed into the slower paced rock steady sound, which soon gave way to Jamaica’s signature reggae rhythm around 1968. Reggae lyrics became characteristically imbued with Rastafarian beliefs that were essential to reggae’s development.

The same year Booker relocated to the US, Marley married Rita Anderson and joined Booker in the US. There, Marley worked as a DuPont lab assistant and on an assembly line at a Chrysler plant under the alias Donald Marley.

In his absence from Jamaica, His Imperial Majesty Emperor Haile Selassie I visited Jamaica. His Majesty is revered as Lord and Savior, according to Rastafarian beliefs and his visit to Jamaica had a profound impact upon Anderson and Marley. Marley soon adopted the Rastafarian way of life and began wearing his hair in dreadlocks.

Upon Marley’s return to Jamaica, The Wailers established the Wail’N Soul’M label/record shop in front of his aunt’s Trench Town home but due to lack of resources, the Wailers dissolved Wail’N Soul’M in 1968.

It was a chance visit to the London offices of Island Records that resulted in The Wailers receiving financial aid to record an album. And in 1973, The Wailers released their album “Catch a Fire.”

Following the successful Catch a Fire tour the Wailers promptly recorded their second album, “Burnin”, which was released in October 1973. Featuring some of Bob’s most celebrated songs “Burnin” introduced their timeless anthem of insurgency “Get Up Stand Up” and “I Shot The Sheriff.”

Marley released a third album, Natty Dread and Rastaman Vibration in 1974 and 1978 respectively. Rastaman Vibration included the song “War”, adapted from a speech to the United Nations General Assembly in 1963, delivered by Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie I. Songs like "War” are examples of how reggae music that praised the liberation war effort in Africa.

Then Marley lived in London for quite some times; there he recorded the albums Exodus released in 1977 and Kaya released in 1978. In Exodus, Marley advocates for the literal return to Africa. It speaks of the need to fulfil the aspirations of all peoples of African descent by moving, metaphorically or literally, to Africa, which is to all intents and purposes the bona fide possession of the Black man. Marley sings of this pan-African return to the fatherland in their songs. He equally emphasises the need to leave "Babylon", the place of captivity where Black people face segregation rather than integration.

At the end of 1978 Bob made his first trip to Africa, visiting Kenya and Ethiopia. And in 1979, Marley released Survival, his ninth album. Survival is a politically progressive work championing pan-African solidarity. The album also included “Africa Unite” and “Zimbabwe”, the latter an anthem for the soon-to-be liberated colony of Rhodesia. He makes specific mention of the need to rid Africa of colonial domination in the song “Zimbabwe.” In April 1980, Marley and the Wailers performed at Zimbabwe’s official Independence Ceremony at the invitation of the country’s newly elected president Robert Mugabe. This profound honour reconfirmed the importance of Marley and the Wailers throughout the African Diaspora and reggae’s significance as a unifying and liberating force.

Additionally, in his posthumously released album, Confrontation, the pan-African scope of another of Marley's song, "Buffalo Soldier", resides in “the vividness of this historical account of an African immigrant whose forced labour built the American nation. It is basically the account of the plight of the Negro in the New World. "Yes, he was stolen from Africa/Brought to America/Fighting in arrival/Fighting for survival/Driven from the mainland/To the heart of the Caribbean." Thus, the "Dreadlocked Rasta" is a metaphorical buffalo and soldier captured and exploited to build the American State. The mention of "Africa", "America", "Jamaica" and the "Caribbean" reveals the story as an allegorical account of Black people in their Diaspora in the New World.”

In 1977, Marley learned that he had cancer that had taken root in his big toe. He fought the disease for eight months, but he succumbed to his cancer in a Miami hospital on May 11, 1981.

In April 1981, Marley was awarded Jamaica’s third highest honour, the Order of Merit, for his outstanding contribution to his country’s culture. Ten days his death, he was given a state funeral as the Honourable Robert Nesta Marley O.M. by the Jamaican government. Thousands of spectators lined the streets to observe the procession of cars that wound its way from Kingston to Marley’s final resting place, a mausoleum in his birthplace of Nine Miles. The Bob Marley and the Wailers legend lives on, however, and thirty-five years after Marley’s death, his music remains as vital as ever in its celebration of life and embodiment of struggle.

Sources

http://www.bobmarley.com/history/

http://motspluriels.arts.uwa.edu.au/MP1600kad.html

Bob Marley born Robert Nesta Marley on 06 February was a Jamaican reggae singer, songwriter, musician and guitarist. His musica...

at 2/05/2016

The month of February is regarded as Reggae Month in Jamaica; however the celebration of the musical genre has spread to other corners of the world- to Nigeria, South Africa, the US and so on. The purpose of Reggae Month is to bring to light and celebrate the lasting impact the musical genre has on Jamaica’s social, cultural and economic development. However, over the course of history, the impact of reggae on social, cultural and economic development has gone beyond the borders of Jamaica to the rest of the world.

Specifically, reggae has, through its oratory capabilities, highlighted and inspired the political independence, economic advancement and pride of black people globally. In essence, pan-Africanist and anti-colonial themes are central in reggae. Generally, reggae has gone on to influence other musical genres such as punk rock and rap.

The pan-Africanist focus of reggae can be traced back to its origins- finding inspiration in ska and steady rock- with their new-found genre, Jamaicans employed it as a tool of British colonial resistance. Even after Jamaica gained independency, reggae continued to reflect social struggles and historical experiences of Jamaicans.

Significant is the fact that the colonial context of Jamaica resonated with that of Black people around the world. The colonised people of Africa, Latin America, the Caribbean and all over began to employ reggae as a tool of resistance. Reggae became the music of the oppressed, and of revolutionaries.

In this month’s Friday Feature, we take a look at a few reggae musicians who have used their art as tool to fight oppression and domination, which in turn, has inspired others the world over to fight for their own freedom and dignity.

Sources:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reggae

http://motspluriels.arts.uwa.edu.au/MP1600kad.html

The month of February is regarded as Reggae Month in Jamaica; however the celebration of the musical genre has spread to other corners ...

at 2/02/2016

at 1/15/2016

Kwasi Wiredu

“By decolonization, I mean divesting African philosophical thinking of all undue influences emanating from our colonial past”

-Kwasi Wiredu

Kwasi Wiredu is a philosopher; his work is centred on the relationship between culture and philosophy. In particular, he is concerned with the philosophical conditions of an intercultural dialogue. He points out that the value of the African tradition for the dialogue of cultures, demands a "conceptual decolonisation" and develops new concepts of ethics of consensus to promote democracy.

Wiredu was born 03 of October 1931 in Kumasi, Ghana. It was at Adisadel College in Cape Coast, Ghana that he discovered philosophy through the works of Plato and Bertrand Russell. After his secondary schooling, Wiredu attended the University of Ghana, Legoni in the vicinity of Accra where he obtained a BA (1958). After graduating, he went to University College, Oxford where he obtained his M.Phil (1960). While at Oxford, Wiredu wrote his thesis on “Knowledge, Truth and Reason”, and upon graduating he was appointed to a teaching post at the University College of North Staffordshire (now the University of Keele). After a year, Wiredu returned to Ghana to teach philosophy at the University of Ghana, his old university. He remained at the University of Ghana for twenty-three years, during which time he became first Head of Department and then Professor. In 1983, Wiredu became a member of the Committee of Directors of the International Federation of Philosophical Societies. Additionally, from 1985 and 1986, Wiredu has been a fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Centre for Scholars and the National Humanities Centre, North Carolina respectively. Since 1987, he has held a professorship at the University of South Florida in Tampa in the United States of America (US) and remains there today. He is also Vice-President of the Inter-African Council for Philosophy.

Numerous visiting professorships led Wiredu to various universities are around the world. In Nigera, Wiredu holds a professorship from the University of Ibadan, Nigeria (1984). In the United States, he also holds several visiting professorships from the University of California, Los Angeles, California (1979–1980), University of Richmond, Virginia (1985), Carleton College, Minnesota (1986) and Duke University, North Carolina (1994–95, 1999–2001). He has published articles in Logic, Epistemology and African Philosophy and has written entries in encyclopaedias and anthologies. His book Philosophy and an African Culture was published by Cambridge University Press in 1980. Person and Community: Ghanaian Philosophical Studies was jointly edited by him and Kwame Gyekye and published in 1992 by the Council for Research in Values and Philosophy, New York. His Cultural Universals and Particulars: An African Perspective, (Bloomington: Indiana University Press) appeared in 1996. He also edited A Companion to African Philosophy, published by Blackwell in 2004.

Wiredu's work remains influential as colonial accounts of African thought has led him to raise some fundamental questions about philosophy and culture and, in particular, about the philosophical conditions of inter-cultural dialogue. Investigation encounters intersections with epistemological and ethical issues.

Selected Works:

Philosophy and an African Culture. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (1980)

Cultural Universals and Particulars: An African Perspective. Bloomington: Indiana University Press (1996)

Person and Community: Ghanaian Philosophical Studies [ed] Wiredu & Kwame Gyekye. New York: Council for Research in Values and Philosophy (1992)

A Companion to African Philosophy. Oxford: Blackwell (2003)

An Oral Philosophy of Personhood: Comments on Philosophy and Orality (2003)

Toward Decolonizing African Philosophy and Religion. African Studies Quarterly, Volume 1 Issue 4 (1998)

Sources:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kwasi_Wiredu

http://philosophy.usf.edu/faculty/kwiredu/

http://www.uni-tuebingen.de/en/facilities/zentrale-einrichtungen/forum-scientiarum/research-activities/fellows/prof-dr-kwasi-wiredu.html

Wiredu, K. Toward Decolonizing African Philosophy and Religion, African Studies Quarterly, Volume 1, Issue 4 (1998)

Kwasi Wiredu “By decolonization, I mean divesting African philosophical thinking of all undue influences emanating from our colonial pa...

at 1/08/2016

The theme for our weekly instalment, ‘Biography of the Week’, in the month of January is African Philosophers. Each week, the biographies and works of philosophers hailing from Africa will be celebrated. Of the numerous past and present philosophers Africa has produced, the four sages we are covering are John Samuel Mbiti, Kwasi Wiredu, Emmanuel Chukwudi Eze and Valentin-Yves Mudimbe. This week we begin with John Samuel Mbiti.

John Samuel Mbiti

“I am because we are and, since we are, therefore I am.”

-John Samuel Mbiti

John Samuel Mbiti, “the father of contemporary African theology”, is a philosopher and as of 2005 an Emeritus professor at the University of Bern and a parish minister to the town of Burgdorf, Switzerland. Collecting and synthesizing indigenous concepts of God, myths, stories, prayers, and proverbs into a religiously oriented “African worldview.” Mbiti, in his works, explores the complex relationship between African and Christian ontology theology, and ethics.

Born on 30 November 1931 in Mulango, Kitui, Kenya, Mbiti is one of six children of Samuel Mutuvi Ngaangi and Velesi Mbandi Mutuvi of the Akamba people. He was the first child to survive childbirth, thus he was given the surname ‘Mbiti’ which literally means ‘hyena’ and symbolically means ‘a child vowed unto God’- the surname being in effect a prayer in thanksgiving and for survival. As a child, Mbiti worked in the fields and herded stock; he also went to the local missionary school called the African Inland Church. After that Mbiti attended primary school at Kitui before attending Alliance High School in 1946 near Nairobi.

Mbiti’s development as a promising young Christian academic is, however, only half the story. He is a member of the Akamba people, who occupy Ukambani, an area in eastern and south-central Kenya. As a boy and a young man, Mbiti was systematically and deeply immersed in Christian life and doctrine. His education was Christian and Western; it was not traditional and African. There was, however, another, informal education for young Mbiti—Akamba stories and the art of storytelling.

It was the combination of his Christian academic training and his informal education that inspired Mbiti to write his first novel, Mutunga Na Ngewa Yake, while attending high school. He went on to write a second novel, however, the missionaries responsible for assessing and recommending publications lost the only manuscript.

Having completed high school, in 1949 Mbiti went to study at Makerere University College in Kampala, Uganda, which was an external college of the University of London. Majoring in English and Geography, Mbiti was the one of University’s first students to graduate with a degree. As a student, Mbiti was also involved in the Christian life of the University community and it was during this period that he decided to take up the ministry.

After graduating with a BA in 1953, Mbiti taught for some time at his home school in Kenya. Around this time, he started collecting traditional stories and proverbs. Mbiti then went to the United States of America (US) to study at Barrington College (now Gordon-Barrington College). After a period of two years, Mbiti obtained an AB and a Th.B at Barrington College. He then went back to Kenya to teach at the Teacher Training College at Kangundo, and at the same time doing iterant preaching. Mbiti was offered the William Paton Lectureship, which saw him back in the United States as a visiting lecturer at the Sally Oak Colleges from 1956 to 1960.

Mbiti went on to do his doctoral studies in New Testament studies at Cambridge University, and obtained his Ph.D. in 1963. While at Cambridge he met his wife Verena Siegenthaler from Switzerland whom he married in 1965. The Oxford University Press published the results of his research in 1971 as New Testament Eschatology in an African Background: A Study of the Encounter Between New Testament Theology and African Traditional Concepts. Mbiti’s approach to the problem of syncretism has always been religious, but initially it was specifically theological. In New Testament Eschatology in an African Background, Mbiti inquires into the deepest psycho-spiritual grounds whereupon Africans and Christians might meet. These grounds are eschatological; that is, they draw on a concern, shared in traditional Akamba society and in Christianity, with the ultimate destiny of human beings. For each, as Mbiti reads the Akamba and the New Testament, this destiny is both otherworldly and corporate. After a relatively brief period of several generations as “living-dead,” the Akamba lose individual personhood to a generalized spiritual status in the endlessly receding past, the Tene. Christians, too, understand their being spiritually, but not in the distant past—nor, Mbiti argues, in the future. Instead, they see their spirituality in the present/presence of Christ, whereby individuals become a “many-in-one.”

Ordained to the Anglican orders in 1963, Mbiti served for fifteen months in St. Michael's parish at St. Albans, near London. From 1964 to1974, he was lecturer and later professor at Makerere University, Uganda, teaching New Testament, theology, African religion, and other world religions. Mbiti also assisted in the chapel ministry.

His skills as a researcher and an author resulted in his well-known African Religions and Philosophy first published in 1969. It was Mbiti’s first work to challenge Christian assumption that traditional African religious ideas were "demonic and anti-Christian". His sympathetic treatment of traditional religions was based on massive field work. Mbiti is clear that his interpretation of these religions is from a firmly Christian perspective, and this aspect of his work has sometimes been severely criticized. Considered by the author to have been merely a compilation of lecture notes brought together at his students' request, the worldwide response to this publication came as an unexpected surprise to him. With time Mbiti produced an increasing number of publications that have made an impact on the African theological scene. The next two decades saw the publication of (among others) Concepts of God in Africa (1970), Love and Marriage in Africa (1973), The Prayers of African Religion (1975) and Bible and Theology in African Christianity (1986). Besides his well-known books he has published over 400 items including books, articles, essays, poems, and book reviews in the fields of Christianity, theology, biblical studies, ecumenics, literature and African religion.

From 1974 to 1980 he served as director and professor at the Ecumenical Institute of the World Council of Churches at the Château de Bossey in Geneva. After that he took up full time parish ministry in Burgdorf in the Reformed Church of Bern, Switzerland, where he served from 1981 until he retired in 1996. From 1983 to 2003 he taught on part-time basis at the Faculty of Theology, University of Bern, as professor of the Science of Mission and Extra-European Theology. He has been a visiting professor at various universities and seminaries in Africa, Australia, Britain, Canada, Germany, Switzerland and the U.S.A. In recognition of his contribution to the church and academic knowledge, he has been awarded three honorary doctorate degrees: LHD (h.c.) in 1973 by Barrington College, U.S.A., the Dr. Theol. (h.c.) in 1991 by the University of Lausanne, Switzerland and the D.D. (h.c.) in 1997 by the General Theological Seminary, New York.

Mbiti played a most important role in placing biblical studies and cultural heritage in the midst of the theological process. His main thrust and contribution in publications and teaching have been in the framework of African Heritage, Biblical, Ecumenical and Inter-religious studies. He maintains that the Bible is the guide and indispensable tool of theological reflection and articulation; that theology is the product of the universal church in its local and global dimensions; and that the peoples of Africa remain largely and deeply religious in outlook and practice. He sees the theological task in Africa as being enormous, and feels that individual theologians can best tackle it in the spirit of the proverb that says: "One person cannot embrace the baobab tree."

He is married to Verena Mbiti-Siegenthaler and they have four children, a son Kyeni Samuel, and daughters Maria Mwende, Esther Mwikali, and Anna-Kavata.

Selected Works:

Akamba Stories. Oxford Library of African Literature. Oxford University Press (1966)

Poems of Nature and Faith. Poets of Africa. East African Publishing House (1969).

African Religions and Philosophy. African Writers Series. Heinemann [1969] (1990)

Concepts of God in Africa. London: SPCK (1970)

New Testament Eschatology in an African Background. Oxford University Press (1971)

Love and Marriage in Africa. London: Longman (1973)

Introduction to African Religion. African Writers Series. Heinemann [1975] (1991)

The Prayers of African Religion . London: SPCK (October 1975)

Bible and Theology in African Christianity. Oxford University Press (1987)

African Proverbs. Pretoria: UNISA Press (1997)

Sources:

http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/579948.John_S_Mbiti

http://www.dacb.org/stories/kenya/mbiti_john.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Mbiti

http://www.enotes.com/topics/johns-mbiti

The theme for our weekly instalment, ‘Biography of the Week’, in the month of January is African Philosophers. Each week, the biographies a...

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Bob Marley

Reggae Month

A Poem by Sizakele Phohleli

From the Book: letters to cinnamon

Bio of the Week: Kwasi Wiredu

Bio of the Week: John Mbiti