On April 13, 1973, Bob Marley and the Wailers released their fifth studio album, Catch A Fire, catapulting themselves and reggae onto the world stage. With a mix of politically conscious tracks like “Slave Driver” and “400 Years” and mellow lovers rock tracks like “Stir It Up,” The Wailers became the leading reggae group out of Jamaica, charting the path for reggae’s international reach and popularity.
Before reggae came to espouse its quintessential feature, the ska stroke or “skank” rhythm of the guitar along with an average tempo of 80-110 beats per minute (slower than most pop songs), it was preceded by the quicker and upbeat genre of rocksteady and ska. Catch A Fire marked this shift to the reggae we recognize within the trajectory of The Wailers’ career as well.
Critique and Resistance
Catch A Fire opens with the arguable fan-favorite of the album, “Concrete Jungle.” This Bob Marley classic sets the political tone and the somewhat pessimistic mood of the album with the opening line, “No sun will shine in my day today… darkness has covered my light.” This is followed by the poignant, “No chains around my feet, but I’m not free / I know I am bound here in captivity.”
Though this song may have been written at a low point in Bob Marley’s personal life, it also draws upon the changing forms of the history of exploitation of African people: from enslavement to peonage; from peonage to political imprisonment and more quotidian forms of degradation under colonialism. That there may not be chains around his feet, but he’s not free is an expression of what the Party means when we say, “Not Yet Uhuru.”
The reality of unfreedom in what they call “post-racial” America or “independent Africa” is exemplified in the attacks on anti-colonial free speech against the Uhuru 3, and more recently, against Mahmoud Kahlil, a Columbia University student who was kidnapped by U.S. immigration agents on March 8 and threatened to have his green card revoked because he organized support of the Palestinian liberation struggle on his campus.
“Not Yet Uhuru” is not a declaration of pessimistic defeat but a recognition of the work that remains to be done to realize liberation in our lifetime.
Similarly, in Catch A Fire, this doom and gloom is followed by a critique on colonialism and calls of resistance in the second track, “Slave Driver.” Here, Marley recalls the horrors of enslavement, singing “Every time I hear the crack of a whip, my blood runs cold / I remember on the slave ship how they brutalize our very soul.” Marley critiques the social system under colonialism and the false notions of freedom and independence supposedly conferred onto African people by saying, “Today they say that we are free / only to be chained in poverty.”
True to roots reggae, however, lamentation is not the sole reason Marley calls upon this history of exploitation. Drawing on the album title, Marley intones, “Slave Driver, the table has turned / Catch a fire, so you can get burned!”
This is then followed by a Peter Tosh favorite, “400 Years.” Written and sung by Peter Tosh, this third track borders on the spiritual with the background vocals creating a somber mood, cushioning the even more somber lamentations of Tosh’s voice as he beseeches, “Four hundred years, way too long / and it’s the same philosophy.” This seemingly downtrodden mood, however, is juxtaposed by Tosh’s call for resistance: “Let’s make a move! The time has come;” and his optimism of a liberated future: “So won’t you come with me? I’ll take you to a land of liberty; where we can live a good, good life and be free.”
Despite their group name highlighting Bob Marley, Catch A Fire was way more creatively collaborative than that and the album cover suggests. Peter Tosh and Bunny Wailer—who were artists in their own right and would later become giants in reggae—were at this point in the Wailers’ history still part of the band. In addition to “400 Years,” Peter Tosh also wrote and recorded, “Stop That Train.”
A Lovers Interlude
The album takes a thematic turn, however, with the fifth track “Baby We’ve Got A Date (Rock it Baby),” where the love song section of the album begins. Track six, “Stir It Up,” a classic within Bob Marley’s entire discography, begins with the skank of the lead guitar, backed by Aston “Family Man” Barrett’s deep bass carrying the melody.
This lovers interlude section of the album is closed by the seventh track, “Kinky Reggae,” where Marley introduces some easy-going sensuality and frivolity to the album with lyrics like “I went downtown / I saw Miss Brown / She had brown sugar, all over her booga wooga.” Despite its somewhat overt sexual innuendos, one interpretation I’d prefer to get behind is that this is a love song to the versatility of reggae itself—which Bob Marley was wont to do throughout his career.
Take “Trenchtown Rock,” for example, where he sings one of his more profound and oft-repeated lines, “One good thing about music, when it hits you feel no pain.” Another example is “Roots, Rock, Reggae” where he spends the entire song narrating his love for reggae music: “Play I some music / This a reggae music; hey Mr. Music / you sure sound good to me.”
Culture and Its Revolutionary Potential
Toward the close of the album, track eight, “No More Trouble,” brings us back to political commentary. Marley and background singers repeat the lines “We don’t need no more trouble / Make love and not war.” This of course is followed by some form of call to action: “Help the weak if you are strong now!
The 1973 release of Catch A Fire is contextualized by the intense political struggles taking place in Jamaica but in the world as well. 1970s Jamaica oversaw the rise of Michael Manley and the People’s National Party (PNP) which was more reformist than revolutionary despite its name. Clashes and gang violence whether in support of the PNP or the right-wing Jamaica Labour Party in the streets of Kingston were commonplace during this time. The hot-tempered uneasiness of the political situation was a mood the album could not help but reflect.
Though Catch A Fire is certainly a product of its own time, it is also informed by a temporality that transcends the 20th century. Bob Marley, and most roots reggae artists, call upon African history in a way that does not relegate it to an event confined to the decade or century it transpired. This is exemplified in the present-tense lyrics of “Slave Driver” and “400 Years.”
This artistic decision, conscious or not, has within it the potential of inspiring revolutionary resistance among the people because it links the material conditions imposed upon African people under colonialism to a much longer practice that African people have been resisting against since the onset of the colonial attack on Africa. It is an empowering call that draws upon African history to inspire and invigorate our struggle today because the enemy has not changed.
This is the kind of revolutionary culture that African people have always been capable of—a revolutionary culture of which Catch A Fire and roots reggae is just one expression.
