I&I on Youtube

The first television interview about I&I:The Natural Mystics is now up on Youtube courtesy of the BBC and Random House.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0HtNHJi4MuA 

From R&B Crooners to Dreadlock Rastas

Will be riffing on the evolution of the Wailers music from R&B to roots reggae on Ireland's Phantom radio tomorrow afternoon with Roison O'Dea on Phantom Daily. Hope to get onto why 'Concrete Jungle' is so great.

http://www.phantomfm.com/

Phantom 105.2, the home of Rock in Dublin - Phantom 105.2, the home of Rock in Dublin

www.phantomfm.com

Bob Marley documentary directed by Kevin Macdonald

Boby Marley documentary rises from the ashes. After the crash and burn of Martin Scorsese and Jonathan Demme's efforts to document Marley's life on film, Kevin Macdonald takes up the challenge. MacDonald has teamed up with Cow Boy films again. In the past this team brought out The Last King of Scotland. MacDonald is a fine filmaker. So finger's crossed, we might see his efforts reach the big screen next year.

http://www.cowboyfilms.co.uk/

I&I on Newstalk radio

More talk about I&I: The Natural Mystics on Ireland's Newstalk radio on Tuesday 14 December at 3.30pm


http://www.newstalk.ie/

Bob Marley's concern about heightening his Africanness

 The headline in the article below in the British newspaper, The Independent, deserves a comment

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/news/bob-marley-blacked-up-to-blend-in-2151047.html

It's not a headline I'd have used if I'd written the article.  But I do believe Bob Marley over-compensated for his fair complexion when living in Trench Town by embracing the culture and becoming as black as everyone else. Not that there would have been much choice. Not too many white folk re-located to Trench Town. It was a choice though that he willingly made, as Marley saw himself as unashamedly black. In I&I : The Natural Mystics, I riff on Bob Marley's sense of his identity.


"I didn’t think I would like a guy with his [fair] complexion,’ Rita said of Bob 

Marley. Rita was dark-skinned, and, conversely, wondered whether her

blackness was part of her attraction to Bob. Marley was so racially

sensitised that she remembered him asking her ‘to rub shoe polish in

his hair to make it more black, make it more African."

This is only one section of a larger argument I make in the book about this vexed and complicated subject.

Peter Tosh documentary on BBC radio 4

Peter Tosh emerges from the shadows of Bob Marley with a radio doc devoted to him. About time. Maybe now there might be a chance to propose an archive hour on the great man, exploring his innermost thoughts as relayed in his audio diary, the Red X tapes. For now, Don Letts's profile on Mr Steppin' Razor himself is a good place to start. Great to hear the oracle, Roger Steffens, sounding in such fine form.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00w1yzy

I&I: The Natural Mystics: Reading in Camden, London

I'll be reading from my new biography of the original Wailers, I&I: The Natural Mystics at The Working Men's College in Camden, London on Tuesday 09 November. Drop in to hear how and why the 1960s R&B crooners, Peter Tosh, Bunny Wailer and Bob Marley, traded in their brylcreem hairdos and dowop harmonies for dreadlocks and Reggae.

http://en-gb.facebook.com/event.php?eid=166801373344421

Dub Wise on BBC World Service

Geoffrey Philp speaks movingly and wisely about the Caribbean voice in poetry in an interview this week on a programme called The Strand on BBC World Service.