Bob Marley, Zurich, 1980
“Watch, watch, watch what your doin’,” chanted Bob Marley at the One Love Peace Concert in Kingston, Jamaica in 1978. At the time, Jamaica was torn by sectarian violence, and Marley had returned from London in the hope of promoting reconciliation. Hearing Marley’s improvised chant, the crowd of 32,000 assumed he was voicing a general warning. Watch what you’re doing, lest you cause further harm.
As it happened, Marley was speaking to Junior Marvin, his lead guitarist, who had just played a wrong note. “Everybody thought he was telling the people out there you gotta watch what you’re doin’,” Marvin recalls in Kevin Macdonald’s documentary Marley, “but he was really talking to me.” Given Marley’s stature as a moral leader, it is understandable that his audience might interpret his words as a cautionary exhortation. But their actual context was immediate and professional, their intent practical rather than prophetic. (more…)
One Time, One Meeting 