Bob Marley - Legend and Development Icon

Happy Birthday Legend!

The honorable Robert Nesta “Bob” Marley would have been 76 on this day (February 6, 2021).

We recognise Bob Marley as an icon in international development.

Through the message of his music, which included universal human rights, and his generosity, Bob Marley was both theorist—critiquing “the ‘destructive social forces’ of the modern world’”—and practitioner—communicating to those rendered powerless by systems in the Global North and encouraging them to “challenge existing power relations” (Findlay, 2020).

Bob Marley’s legacy and impact demonstrates why it is important for impacted peoples to lead and own development at all levels—locally, nationally, regionally and globally.

“Marley’s music became very influential in postcolonial movements for development and social change from Australia to Zimbabwe” (Findlay, 2020).

From our Principal Consultant Cara-Marie Findlay’s 2020 Essay,

“Bob Marley’s Music as an Alternative Communicative Channel in Postcolonial Movements for Development and Social Change”

Excerpt from the essay:

The Significance of Referencing Bob Marley

I chose to focus on the music of Bob Marley for several reasons, including he was one of “the first truly global pop stars” (Prestholdt, 2019, p. 70); he used music as an “awareness-raising process that led to processes of collective action” (Tufte, 2017, p. 18), which he saw as an act of resistance; and he exemplifies what Cheryl McEwan defines as a “subaltern.” A subaltern is not simply someone who is generally marginalized or oppressed. A subaltern is “a person or groups of people rendered voiceless and without agency by their social status….people whose voices cannot be heard or that are wilfully ignored in dominant modes of narrative production” (McEwan, 2018, pp. 22-23). Bob Marley refers to these voiceless people as “sufferers” in his song “Babylon System” (Marley & Wailers, 1979).

In 1962, Jamaica—which had been a colony of the United Kingdom, and a colony of Spain before that— became independent. During the 1960s Reggae music emerged as an art form that “spoke of and to the experience of the postcolonial Jamaican underclass,” especially Rastafarians, who were “perceived as dangerous” by Jamaica’s upper class, “and often treated as criminals” (Prestholdt, 2019, p. 80). Reggae presented “the counter-history to the accepted colonial story;” (Hagerman, 2012, p. 385) and was aimed at eliminating the ‘lingering and debilitating modes of thought and action that comprise[d] postcolonial conditions,’ (McEwan, 2018 quoting Myers, 2006, p. 33) in Jamaica.

Messages in Bob Marley’s Music

Bob Marley’s music was heavily influenced by, and intertwined with, his Rastafarian beliefs, there is no separating the music from the beliefs that shaped the man. The “Babylon System” Marley referred to in his music—for example, the 1979 song with the same name—is part of a wider Rastafarian Biblical allegory in which the Global North is as destructive to people of African descent as the kingdom of Babylon was to the Israelites. Marley’s music critiques the “destructive social forces” of the modern world including: “greed, envy, desires for power and control,” (Prestholdt, 2019, p. 79) “racism, classism, dehumanization,” neo-colonialism through “teaching a white version of history,” (Hagerman, 2012, p. 383) and any oppressive system that upholds the ‘institutional models of the elite of the western world,’ (Hagerman, 2012 quoting Johnson-Hill, 1995, p. 383). Marley used his music to communicate to the powerless so they could “understand why they are disempowered,” by making them aware of “the sociocultural conditions that shape one’s life” and “the possibility of their transformation” (Svensson, 2018, p. 11).

Communication for Social Change: The Key to Sustainable Development

By Zipporah Orbisi

FHG Quality Engineer and Consultant

What is Communicating for Social Change?

How does a person create the narrative that will help bring about world peace, and more importantly, who will share the story?

At the turn of the millennium the UN brought together 191 countries to come up with a 15 year plan to conquer 8 global objectives called the Millennium Developmental Goals (MDG’s). However, it was understood that these goals were only one part of the solution to creating positive community development across the world. The key to implementing these changes is in the power of communication for social change.

Communicating for social change is assisting individuals and communities in defining their needs to accelerate their prosperity on their terms.

Battle Plan for Sustainable Community Development

As we endeavor to conquer humanitarian crises such as world poverty and wide-spread famine, we must first go through a communication boot camp.

You must begin with engaging your frontline stakeholders in the communities. The people who will be the vessels directly assisting in bringing forth change.

From there, be sure to incorporate all stakeholders and policymakers on common and cohesive grounds for increased social mobilization.

Having that foundational path in development communication will assist with the propagation of change, allowing for long term sustainability.

A Victory Within Reach

So ultimately how will we know if the “communication” is working?

We must measure our efforts through Social Accountability. Finding a means to quantify the efforts—from policymaker to individual—will help to keep progression constant. Communication can be quantified by things such as the number of public information campaigns, platforms for public dialogue and debate, social audits, and feedback loops from citizens to policymakers.

Social accountability provides a societal system of checks and balances which can inform restructuring objectives and laying the foundation for future goal setting.

At the end of 2015, the UN took a look at its 15 year plan results to find an overwhelming success of statistical progression in each of the 8 MDG categories. Extreme poverty was down 33%, literacy rates for children soared to 91%, women now make up 41% of paid workers outside of agriculture, and there were many more fantastical statistics to share.

What I find to be most impressive is the acceptance from local communities to not only drive the change but also push for more results.

The United Nations decided to enter into another 15 year venture, ending in 2030, in effort to achieve 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

“The seventeen Sustainable Development Goals are our shared vision of humanity and a social contract between the world's leaders and the people,” said UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.

Together, with individuals in communities leading the efforts, will be the only way to contend with twice the number of original goals.

Together, using communication for social change, we will continue to knock down historical doors of aggrievance and replace them with pathways to world peace.