Page:“Trench Town Rock”： Reggae Music, Landscape Inscription, and the Making of Place in Kingston, Jamaica.pdf/6

6 Bob Marley symbolises some of the community’s members attempt to align themselves to the accomplishments of Marley and everything positive he represents.




 * Wall of Honour along Collie Smith Drive, Trench Town.Source: Francis-Rhiney, 2012.

As one enters the community one sees a line of murals depicting Marley and other accomplished reggae artistes from the area including Bunny Wailer and Peter Tosh (Figure 4). In one instance, Marley is seen smoking marijuana with his head fused in with the African continent. The mural depicts the reggae roots album “Exodus” that was produced by Bob Marley and the Wailers in 1977. It is interesting to note that Exodus was Marley’s response to the politically motivated assassination attempt on his life in 1976. As such, most of the album was recorded in London while Marley was in self-imposed exile. It was regarded by many to be his best album ever produced, with several hit singles including “Jamming,” “Waiting in Vain,” and “One Love.” In 1998, the TIME magazine named “Exodus” as the best music album of the 20th century. The album’s backdrop is laden with political intrigue and rhetoric as Marley queried issues of race and class that had, by that time, become very pronounced in a newly independent and postcolonial Jamaican society.

While the community’s attempt to align itself with the image of Bob Marley is quite understandable, it can also be interpreted as playing into place and identity politics. Justifiably, any discussion on the life accomplishments of Bob Marley would be incomplete without looking at his connection with Trench Town. Likewise, any discussion on Trench Town would be partial if one neglects Marley’s legacy—arguably the most prominent person to have lived in the community.

Trench Town is said to have inspired many of Marley’s songs including “Trench Town,” “Trench Town Rock,” “No Woman No Cry,” “Concrete Jungle” and “Natty Dread”. However, by singling out Marley, the community runs the risk of playing into popular conceptions of the place. Throughout most of the literature and electronic media, Trench Town has been narrowed down to its association with the life and legacy of Robert Nesta Marley. For the most part, the literature seems to romanticise the fact that someone as accomplished and internationally renowned such as Marley could grow up in such an impoverished and volatile innercity community, paying little attention to the wealth of other talents and artistry that came from the community before and even during the peak of Bob’s career. No doubt Marley’s ascendancy to international stardom helped place Trench Town on the world map. However, Marley is just one of the many other reggae artistes that came from the community, including the likes of reggae pioneer Joe Higgs, Delroy Wilson, Leroy Sibbles, Bongho Hermon, Alton Ellis, Jimmy Cliﬀ, Ken Booth, Dean Fraser, and the I-Threes and vocal groups such as the Heptones and the Abyssinians. In order to not pay homage to these and other reggae icons the risk of painting a very skewed and “media-centred” representation of the community runs.

The promotion of local places as sites of consumption is fairly well established in the academic literature. In fact, in an eﬀort to drive economic growth, many cities across the world have been promoted as tourism destinations which usually involve the representation of selective imagery targeting specific groups or even including the physical modification of local places to fit a promotable image. While a tremendous amount of emphasis has been placed on the role of extra-local phenomena such as the tourist gaze or the international media in the commodification and popular representation of local places, the role local agents play, especially nonstate actors, in constructing particular images of places cannot be overlooked. Certainly in the case of Trench Town, the inclusion of Bob Marley in the many murals strategically positioned throughout the community promotes a particular image of the community.

The murals seen in Trench Town also conjure up images of Rastafari culture and belief. The painting of Emperor Haile Selassie (Figure 5) can also be seen beside images of Marley, Peter Tosh, and Bunny Wailer. Additionally, Marijuana, which is used by most Rastafari in their cultural/spiritual practices, and Africa, which represents the “mother land,” form dominant images in the paintings. The colours red, green, and gold are also emphasised as they represent the colours of the Ethiopian flag. Bob Marley and to a greater extent Trench Town are as central—as other places like the Pinacle and Wareika Hill—to any discussion on Rastafari culture. Bob himself was a staunched Rastafari and West Kingston (Trench Town in particular) was known to be the home and refuge of some of the first set of Rastafarians in Jamaica, including the likes of Mortimo Planno, Bongho Herman, and Leonard Howell.