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From: HF.GTD@forsythe.stanford.edu (Gabrielle Daniels)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.african.american
Subject: Peter Tosh documentary
Date: Tue, 29 Sep 92 21:11:20 GMT+5:00
Organization: Stanford University, California, USA

Movie review, y'all.  If you hear about this flick coming your way,
run--don't walk to see "Stepping Razor:  Red X (The Peter Tosh
Story).  It's a documentary about Peter Tosh, one of the original
Wailers (Bunny Livingston and Bob Marley) who was known as the
Malcolm X of Jamaica.  I saw this movie Sunday afternoon in San
Francisco at the Roxie Theatre on 16th near Valencia....deep!

During the last years of his life, Tosh was preparing an
autobiography.  He began to free-associate on cassette tapes, called
the "red x" tapes.  They were so named because whenever he saw his
name on an official government document--any document--it was always
followed by a red X.  He was convinced that this marked him as a
wanted man, wanted by the devil and his evil minions for speaking
the truth about black people.  Tosh was highly outspoken about what
he felt was the diminution of the black man's rights everywhere.  He
was thoroughly dedicated to Rasta principles.  The tapes, interviews
with relatives, friends and colleagues, and music form the basis of
the movie.

Peter Tosh was murdered by "burglars" September 11, 1987.  Everyone
in Jamaica knew it had to have been a rubout.  Not knowing all the
details of his political/musical work, I felt that there was
something wrong here, just like when I heard of Bob Marley's death
from cancer of the leg.  Remember when Marley intervened in the
heavy election warfare between Michael Manley and Edward Seaga in
the late Seventies, put his arms around them both and begged them to
keep the peace?  What you didn't see or hear was Tosh's performance
in which he said that the only peace people were really talking
about was the peace of the graveyard.

Tosh broke up with the Wailers in the mid-Seventies.  Apparently,
the brother didn't say much publicly about why he broke up the band,
but on one of his tapes he says Marley had been the son of a white
man, and Chris Blackwell, their manager/producer et al, was a white
man, and between them both the Wailers' message had been diluted.
Tosh claimed that Marley hadn't known a thing about Rasta until Tosh
told him about it, introduced him to the Rasta elders and in fact,
schooled him.  Peter Tosh was so frightening to folks after the
break-up with the Wailers that it took some time before his first
record, "Legalize It" was produced.  I remember when "Legalize" came
out and all the political heads were thinking they could use it to
get Mary Jane legal in California.  The brotherman was only talking
about legalizing ganja in Jamaica, as the root, the fruit of Rasta.

Given the necrophilia around Marley's money and legend---the estate
didn't get settled until only recently, after phony wills, contracts
and young, underage heirs showing up from here to Jamaica were
straightened out--I should say there is some basis to Tosh's
contention, which resulted to the promotion of one guy, Bob Marley,
as the sole prophet of reggae.  Not to diss the brother's cold
bones, mind you.  But where money is involved...

There are parts of "Red X" that are truly beautiful and cruel, like
Jamaica.  There was one Rasta elder who was being interviewed, he
must have been about 70 or so.  He looked like an old lion with his
mane of dreads, deep voice and SERIOUSLY smoking weed.  His mother
and father are interviewed as well...his father still insisting that
Peter wasn't his son, his mother saying she never knew he was going
to turn out to be this big man.  Tosh reminisces that he had already
learned how to play church organ by rote at 7.  By 12, he had
learned guitar.  The photography dances around districts all around
Trenchtown, lands at the scene of the murder at his house by the
sea.

This movie was directed by Nicholas Campbell, runs 100 minutes,
came out this year (1992) from Great Britain.  Go see it.
-- 

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