A working class hero

  Read this touching reflection at the end of a wikipedia post on Bob Marley while in my hotel room listening to the distant reggae-like tunes of the invited band - it's a Friday. Marley's image on T-shirts and posters is also quite frequent in Africa - only second to specific football sportswear, see next post.

The 'Legacy' section of the Marley wikipedia text reads as follows:
Marley has also evolved into a global symbol, which has been endlessly merchandised through a variety of mediums. In light of this, author Dave Thompson in his book 'Reggae and Caribbean Music', laments what he perceives to be the commercialized pacification of Marley's more militant edge, stating:
"Bob Marley ranks among both the most popular and the most misunderstood figures in modern culture ... That the machine has utterly emasculated Marley is beyond doubt. Gone from the public record is the ghetto kid who dreamed of Che Guevara and the Black Panthers, and pinned their posters up in the Wailers Soul Shack record store; who believed in freedom; and the fighting which it necessitated, and dressed the part on an early album sleeve; whose heroes were James Brown and Muhammad Ali; whose God was Ras Tafari and whose sacrament was marijuana. Instead, the Bob Marley who surveys his kingdom today is smiling benevolence, a shining sun, a waving palm tree, and a string of hits which tumble out of polite radio like candy from a gumball machine. Of course it has assured his immortality. But it has also demeaned him beyond recognition. Bob Marley was worth far more".


So here I am, pretty much stucked at the luxury hotel (too much work) which will make you feel as if you were staying at any similar hotel in a Western capital. Only reality is just a threshold away. All these interchangeable hotels have their standard music threads going on day and night (horror vacui is the actual name for that) and Oh dear, there is the 'pacification' or 'emasculation' at its highest peak. Not just Marley -don't hear any of his songs along my whole stay- but every single musician. Take Lennon, for instance: 'Woman' and a funny female-voiced version of 'Beautiful boy' are both featured (true: I do other things besides listening to the rubbish that pours out of the loudspeakers, so I can't actually tell about how it goes 24/7). And that's it. No 'Imagine'. No 'Working class hero'. No 'Cold turkey' (well I can understand there's no 'Cold turkey'). Not a single African song (closest to it being Collins' 'Another day in paradise', which is African alright). Polite radio indeed. Like candy from a gumball machine. Indeed.

Whatever happened to brave music broadcasters?

[I know luxury hotel music threads have nothing to do with broadcasters or DJs, but rather with computers and telecoms, but it's a very sad thing what they do to music - like Flack's 'Killing me softly' only the other way round, it's actually the music what gets systematically killed there]