Jamaicans on Wednesday rose in honour of the legendary reggae star, Peter Tosh, as they marked the 2nd annual ‘International Peter Tosh Day’ in grand style. He was murdered in 1987 during a home invasion.
As a Grammy Award-winning reggae legend, musician, and human-rights activist, Peter Tosh exploded on to the world stage as an activist and solo artiste with his 1976 release, Legalise It.
He worked to promote the legalisation of marijuana, equal rights, and to expand Jamaica’s cultural and musical influence. His vicious wit marked militant tunes like the anti-monarchist Babylon Queendom; 400 Years’ take on Jamaica’s racially ruptured history; Equal Rights; and Legalize It (“and I will advertise it”), the ganja lib anthem with which he announced himself as a solo artist, post-Wailers, in 1976.
Tosh was no stranger to oppression in his homeland and knew the fight for legalisation and equal rights well. His music served as a catalyst for a generation to fight for what they believed in.
This year’s event featured photography by Lee Jaffe, a New Yorker who had played harmonica with The Wailers, the LP’s sleeve was pure stoner’s p0rn – Tosh toking away amid a field of towering marijuana plants that would have topped even the singer’s lanky six-foot-plus frame. With last year’s Peter Tosh Day falling exactly five days after weed was decriminalised in Jamaica, you can almost hear the cycles of history whiz past – or more specifically, perhaps, a unicycle of the sort the ever-dramatic Tosh liked to ride in the streets, sporting his trademark firemen’s shades and puffing at his meerschaum pipe.
.....
Vanguard