Redemption Songs
How Bob Marley's Nova Scotia Song Lights the Way Past Racism
- Publisher
- Pottersfield Press
- Initial publish date
- Sep 2016
- Category
- General
-
Paperback / softback
- ISBN
- 9781897426876
- Publish Date
- Sep 2016
- List Price
- $21.95
Classroom Resources
Where to buy it
Description
Redemption Songs tells the extraordinary story of how one of Bob Marley's greatest songs was born in Nova Scotia. It opens with Marley's live acoustic performance of Redemption Song at the end of his life, and reveals that the core lyric comes from a speech Marcus Garvey delivered in Sydney, Nova Scotia, in 1937.
The line "We are going to emancipate ourselves from mental slavery" springboards the reader into the book's ambitions. The author explores why Marley so revered Garvey, and, in doing so, looks at the roots of Rastafarianism and ideas about race.
About the author
Jon Tattrie is a journalist whose ancestors arrived in Nova Scotia with EdwardCornwallis. This is his third historical book, following Black Snow, a novel setin the 1917 Halifax Explosion, and The Hermit of Africville (see page 10), abiography of one of Canada’s longest-running political protesters. The Hermitof Africville was a finalist for the 2010 Democracy 250 Atlantic Book Awardfor Historical Writing. Tattrie lives in Halifax with his wife.
