On the 15th of January 2012, the 83rd anniversary of the birth of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., I was watching KING, a film based on his life and work. The scenes were frequently ones of bloody abuse of African-American’s and their supporters in their peaceful struggle for civil rights as expressed in the nation’s constitution. These scenes created perplexity in my grandson who then turned to me and asked, “Why are they beating the black people just for being black?” I was moved almost to tears. Not emotions from the history being replayed before me. I had either lived or been witness to some of it and had been a part of the artist contingent along with Stevie Wonder on the marches to establish Dr. King’s birthday as a national holiday in the USA. I was becoming happily tearful at the fact that the civil rights leaders vision was unfolding as here sitting right beside me was a new generation finding human injustice to each other appalling. How did we emerge from this nightmare of brutality? The human desire for freedom, equal rights, justice, love and peace is ingrained in our spirit, mind and body and is evident in the involuntary love for life that makes even the suicidal person struggle to remain alive at that ultimate moment when life is about to leave the body. Entrapped beings will initially struggle to be released. Some do succumb to the seeming futility of their effort due to consistent pressure but there are those who as the reggae artists say “ Can’t cool, can’t quench”. On the African continent, ones of this disposition started to resist as soon as the colonizers’ intentions became evident. In the Americas, the ones taken away resisted slavery every step of the way and in Southern Africa the attempts by settlers to subjugate the indigenous population met fierce resistance. Driven by a greedy lust for the people and their wealthy land, Middle Eastern peoples and eventually Europeans developed comparably advanced weapons of mass destruction. Using these weapons to compensate for their being severely outnumbered they enforce pseudo-religious myths of race supremacy and inferiority and were able to create minority regimes to administer wickedness and brutality over the indigenous people and their territory. The end of the last great European tribal war known as world war 2 saw nationalism rear its head universally and by 1960 Harold Macmillan then prime minister of the UK heralded the changes in his speech given right here in South Africa stating that, “The wind of change is blowing through this continent, and whether we like it or not, this growth of national consciousness is a political fact. We must all accept it as a fact, and our national policies must take account of it.” Pan-African discussions inspired by leaders such as the Right Honourable Marcus Mosiah Garvey fuelled a chain reaction of liberation movements and agitation for political independence. People of Africa at home and abroad embraced, coordinated, communicated and became active in the affairs of Africa and Africans universally. The Honourable Dudley Thompson QC represented and got an acquittal of Jomo Kenyatta in Kenya, Kwame Nkrumah declared Garvey a major inspiration, and a picture of Dedan Kimate inspired the now popular dreadlocks and as a child in Jamaica I grew knowing about Patrice Lumumba. In 1493 Pope Alexander VI was audacious enough to draw the Tordesillas line through the Atlantic Ocean granting all territory west of it to Spain and all territory east of it to Portugal (hence Brazil as the only Portuguese speaking territory in South America). This line was extrapolated in the carving up of the African continent at Otto von Bismarck’s Berlin Conference in 1884. The post war liberation movement succeeded in erasing the political dependency aspect of the line so that by the 1980s there was only a small fraction left to go and that was “ the ignoble and unhappy regime that held our brothers and sisters in … South Africa” The struggle against the incarceration of Africans in their own land brought universal action. From the Caribbean, Cuba provided military support much to the chagrin of the so-called right wing western powers. Macmillan’s speech had divided the world into 3 with the so-called left wing being the Marxist/Leninist communists. The resulting Third World was left to be non- aligned but at the mercy of being “developed” by the other 2. The left were often times the only ones who allowed voice to the black and other oppressed peoples as the right were still steeped in the legacy of colonialism and slavery and the so-called first world fear of communist alignment was used as a convenient means of overshadowing the injustice being meted out in many of these countries. Ian Smith seceded from the British Empire and North Rhodesia was not granted independence yet nothing was done, though warships were dispatched to miniscule Anguilla for similar reasons, the military struggle in what was then South Rhodesia, apartheid in South Africa and the Eastern European struggles against Soviet domination stirred world conscience and the artists of the Caribbean played a significant role in the enlightenment that created and maintained that consciousness. By this time the Jamaican born reggae music had been use in land of origin as a vehicle for opening the eyes and ears of the audiences to black liberation that was not being taught in schools and were sometimes against the law in a country of 98% black people whose first national hero is the Right Honourable Marcus Mosiah Garvey. The Ras Tafari movement’s unrelenting African centricity established its influence on the music. Just before the 1970s the Jamaican government and the higher income classes had discouraged this African centricity as radicalism and had deported Guyanese born, UWI, African history professor Dr. Walter Rodney, declaring him persona non grata. The invaluable education that we had received from him especially about Africa before the Middle Eastern and the European arrivals was by this time indelible and so the movement energetically surged forward. The nation of Jamaica though small in area and without military or economic might, rose up to have an artistic and more specifically musical effect on the world that seemed to fulfill King Solomon’s dream as outline in the Kebra Nagast “…And He came forth where they did not look for Him, and illumined the whole world, more especially the First Sea and the Last Sea, Ethiopia and Rôm…”. The Ras Tafari movement inspired mainly by the teachings and activities of the Right Honourable Marcus Mosiah Garvey and of the Negusa Nagast Haile Selassie I challenged oppression using a simple musical form that evolved into being a great vehicle for the message. Rehearsed in its own homeland the themes surpassed just the dancing with and admiration for beautiful women to repatriation to Africa, reparations and human rights. The acknowledged father of lovers rock ( a style of reggae based on male/female love) Alton Ellis released “Going Back To Africa ‘cause I’m Black”. Jimmy Cliff illustrated that positive attitude could create achievement in “You Can Get It If You Really Want”. Mixed race British bands like the Equals challenged racial inequality with “Black Skin Blue Eyed Boys”. There was an alignment with the anti-Vietnam war movements out of San Francisco and bands like Blue Mink’s music searched for the racial “Melting Pot” but not without better treatment of the downtrodden. Groups like the Abyssinians not only took their name from the land of the Negusa Nagast but as orthodox Christians wrote their African centered views, hope for repatriation and gave Amharic cultural information in songs like the anthem “Satta Amassa Gana”, speaking of the land far away and giving praises in Ge’ez an Ethiopian liturgical language related to ancient Hebrew. Africans at home and abroad get a significant boost in confidence when one of ours becomes an international celebrity. Miriam Makeba and Hugh Masakela are examples of South African icons that gained international acclaim by introducing South African music to the world. Their stardom inspired black youth in those days to the extent that the hairstyle called the Makeba, imitating Miriam’s low cut natural hair, predated the Afro and the Soul and was very popular among black women in the USA, Europe and the Caribbean. By the 1970s the Wailers emerged out of Jamaica as a force to be reckoned with universally. The power of the word now stood beside the power of the bomb and the power of money in the cold war era. The group chanted down a system that was likened to the Babylonian displacement, enslavement and exploitation of the nations of Israel. Their music reflected on “400 years” advising the slave master that the table had turned and the system was about to “Catch A Fire”. The oppressed were encouraged to “Get Up, Stand Up” for their rights and not to give up the fight against poverty, for black self esteem and for human equality towards “One Love”. The little island’s music was about to be the “Small Axe” ready to cut down the big tree of hatred. The artists themselves did not escape as the recording companies were concerned about making money and often reluctant to support music whose message could offend some buyers. Communications technology at that time was nowhere near what it is today so the artists had to rely on the recording industry’s distribution mechanisms to disseminate their products. These factors presented a creative challenge that reggae music addressed by creating a blend of dance rhythms and conscious message.