Can't Stop Won't Stop by Jeff Chang Page B

formed Central Peace Council, but more importantly, it could curtail the possibility of civil war or a military coup. Marley agreed, and flew home. In the days leading to the concert, Marley toured through the yards to talk up the peace treaty. At the Black Ark, he and Perry recorded “Blackman Redemption” and “Rastaman Live Up” as Massop and Marshall vibed together in the listening room. 21
    On April 22, thousands packed Kingston’s National Stadium to hear the island’s top musicians, including Dennis Brown, Culture, the Mighty Diamonds, Big Youth, Beres Hammond, Ras Michael and the Sons of Negus, Dillinger and Jacob Miller, who, with his band Inner Circle, had the most popular tune in the country in “Peace Treaty Special,” a rockers-style tribute to Marshall, Massop and the tribes set to a version of the American Civil War–era song, “WhenJohnny Comes Marching Home Again.” 22 “Man can walk the street again, hurrah-ah-e-ah hurrah,” Miller sang joyously. “From Tivoli to Jungle, Lizard Town to Rema—hurrah!” Peter Tosh played a scorching set, laced with withering criticisms of the politicians in attendance. Then Marley took the stage, and the crowd swelled to a roar.
    As the Wailers gave an inspired performance of “Jamming,” Marley called the political leaders onstage. His long dreads cut arcs through the night air, and he danced as if possessed, singing, “Show the people that you love ‘em right, show the people you gonna unite.” Manley stood to the left of Marley, Seaga to the right, and they tentatively gave each other a handshake. Marley clasped their hands, put them in a power grip and lifted them over his head, holding them high for all to see. The crowd was stunned. “Love, prosperity be with us all,” Marley said. “Jah Rastafari. Selassie I.”
    Through music, Marley had brought together a trinity of power, and restored unity to the young nation. Culture, it seemed, had transcended politics.
The Pressure Drop
    But there were other signs as well. Five days before the concert, army soldiers fired on a peaceful ghetto march for better sanitation, killing three demonstrators. The leader of the Central Peace Council, who had called for an end to police corruption, fled the island in fear for his life. Police stopped and searched a taxi Claudie Massop was riding in, then coldly executed him in a hail of fifty bullets. 23 The peace treaty was over. So was Manley’s democratic socialist experiment. In 1980, Seaga and the JLP would be overwhelmingly victorious at the polls, stepping up just in time to be courted by the new Reagan administration in Washington. Almost nine hundred people would die in election-year violence.
    The reggae industry, too, felt the pressure drop. During the heady independence years of the sixties, Coxsone Dodd’s Studio One and Duke Reid’s Treasure Isle had been built from local sound system profits. But the Black Ark studio had been financed by the globalization of the reggae industry. Perry’s dubs had been partly an answer to the growing international demand for reggae. Reggae music was not only a socially stabilizing force, it had become an important commodity.
    The pressures fell disproportionately on the slender shoulders of musicians.Uptown, Bob Marley’s Hope Road residence had become a magnet for Twelve Tribes Rastas, a sect that openly and controversially courted the wealthy, whites and browns. But many more displaced sufferers also frequented the Hope Road yard. Marley archivist Roger Steffens believes that by the late ‘70s, Marley was directly responsible for the economic fortunes of six thousand people. By 1979, the Marley camp had also become aware of CIA operatives tailing them. And yet, despite being diagnosed with cancer, Marley maintained a hectic touring schedule through the end of 1980, perhaps because of such obligations. “It took its