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Saturday, February 12, 2005
As the U.S celebrates Black History month Burning Spear also known as Winston Rodney is being recognized as one of reggae's most underrated advocates.
He is deemed one of its most politically conscious. Irrespective of the ebbs and flows of fashion and fads, not to mention the prejudices of record company executives -- Rodney has stayed true to his themes of black history, resistance against oppression and injustice.
In album after album for the past quarter century, Rodney has made it his mission to tell the real history of the African presence in the Caribbean since the days of slavery, their struggles, their troubles and their triumphs. The story and ideas of the great black Jamaican nationalist Marcus Garvey -- who by chance was born in Rodney's home town of St Ann's Bay in 1887 -- are central to Burning Spear's work.
Garvey was a pivotal figure in the nationalist movement in Jamaica and then the African American civil rights movement early this century
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