Bob
Marley and the Wailers
Rat Race
By
Eric Doumerc © 2006
Ah ! Ya too rude
Oh what a rat race
Oh what a rat race
This is the rat race
Some a lawful, some a
bastard
Some a jacket
Oh what a rat race, rat race
Some a gorgon, some a
hooligan
Some a guinea-gog
On this rat race, yeah
Rat race
I’m singing
When the cat’s away
The mice will play
Political violence fill ya city
Yeah-ah
Don’t involve rasta in your say-say
Rasta don’t work for no CIA
Rat race, rat race, rat race
When you think it’s peace
and safety
A sudden destruction
Collective security for surety, yeah
Don’t forget your history, know your destiny
In the abundance of water, the fool is thirsty.
Rat race, rat race, rat race
Oh, it’s a disgrace to see
the human race
In a rat race, rat race
You got the horse race
You got the dog race
You got the human race
But this is a rat race, rat race
“Rat Race”
appeared on the Rastaman Vibration album which was released
in May 1976 on the Island Records label. The song was
instantly popular and remained in T he
Wailers’ repertoire for many years. Its popularity with
Jamaican and non-Jamaican audiences all over the world is no doubt
due to its reference to both a specifically Jamaican situation and a
more universal context of suffering and oppression. In other words,
the song’s message was sufficiently clear for every Jamacain to pick
up all the references in 1976 and vague enough for every listener to
interpret it according to the situation he or she was in at the
time ; and Bob Marley’s use of proverbs or proverb-like
statements like
“When
the cats’s away, the mice will play”
and
“In
the abundance of water, the fool is thirsty”
ensured that the message would maintain that clarity.
When
“Rat Race”
was
first released in May 1976, the People’s National Party (PNP)
was in office with Michael Manley as Prime Minister. The PNP
had come to power in 1972 on a socialist platform and had vowed to
improve the living and working conditions of Jamaicans (after all,
the PNP’s slogan was
“Better
Must Come”,
inspired by Delroy Wilson’s song). Once in office, Manley’s
government launched a raft of measures like free education and land
reform, but these measures cost money and the 1973 oil crisis dealt
a serious blow to the Jamaican economy. As a consequence, in 1974
the government decided to tax the profits made by the American and
Canadian companies which were in charge of the extraction of bauxite
in Jamaica. This led to a flight of capital and by 1975 the
situation had become even more difficult.
Another problem was Jamaica’s relationship with its communist
neighbour, Cuba. Since 1973 the two countries had launched a series
of programmes which had given the impression that Jamaica was
becoming a communist state. The USA started applying diplomatic
pressure and in 1975 the American Secretary of State, Henry
Kissinger, advised Manley to remain neutral in the Angola affair.
By 1975 Angola was in the throes of a civil war and two warring
factions, the
Movimento Popular de Libertação de Angola
(Popular
Movement for the Liberation of Angola or MPLA)
and
National Union for
the Total Independence of Angola
(UNITA),
were having it out on the streets. The MPLA was of course supported
by the eastern bloc and Cuba. When the Manley government recognized
the MPLA as the legitimate government in Angola, the American
government’s suspicions seemed to be confirmed.
The
Jamaican Opposition accused the PNP government of being a bunch of
Communists, and the Manley government insisted that foreign
influence and the Opposition did their best to destabilize the
country. All kinds of rumours started flying around, from Marxist
guerrillas training in the hills to CIA operatives working in
Jamaica to destabilize the country.
Since
the late 1960s the two political parties, the People’s National
Party and the Jamaica Labour Party, had taken to settle their scores
by using goon squads from the ghetto areas, and this militarization
of ghettoes reached its climax in 1976 when a State of Emergency
the notorious Gun Court was declared by the Manley government. By
1976 to paraphrase Max Romeo’s song, there seemed to be
“war
inna Babylon”.
Marley’s song uses the phrase
“rat race” in a slighlty different sense from the one usually used. These words
are normally associated with competition in the business world, and
more generally with selfishness, acquisitiveness and greed, but in
the 1976 Jamaican context, they could also have referred to the
escalating political violence due to the factors mentioned earlier.
Marley insisted that the whole of Jamaican society, from gorgan
(Rastafarians whose hairstyle looks like the ancient gorgon’s
snakes) to hooligans (rude boys or ghetto toughs) was trapped
in that race and that Jamaicans had become ‘guineapigs’, that is
victims.
The
mention of
“lawfuls“,
“bastards“
and
“jackets“
may point to social divisions as a
“jacket“
for Jamaicans is the child of a woman who is with a man/husband who
is not the child’s natural father; a so-called illegitimate child,
by contrast with a
“lawful“
child
born to the natural father. Again, the implication seems to have
been that the whole of Jamaican society, from uptown to dowtown, was
unable to get out of the rat race.
The
wild rumors flying around at the time are alluded to in the words “say-say“
and of course
“Rasta
don’t work for no CIA“, which
was taken at the time as a sign that Marley was aligned with the
PNP. “Political
violence fill ya city“ is
of course a reference to the fighting on the streets of Kingston
which had been going on for a number of years by then and which had
led to the calling of a State of Emergency in June 1976.
The
song is also notable for Marley’s wry humour and use of punning
which appear in the lines
“You
got the dog race…“
which seem to imply that the political situation in Jamaica had
turned human beings into animals or rats on a treadmill, chasing an
illusion and killing one another in the process.
“Rat
Race“
belongs to a body of songs that bemoaned the growing militarization
of ghettoes and Jamaica’s slow slide into anarchy which were
released in the mid-1970s. These songs include Leroy Smart’s
“Ballistic
Affair“,
Junior Murvin’s
“Police
and Thieves“
and Max Romeo’s
“War
inna Babylon“,
all released in 1976. But the song which most visibly reflected
Marley’s influence was Fred Locks’
“A
True Rastaman“
(available on the Black Star Liners LP, Vulcan, 1977) whose
opening lines went :
So Jah say,
Rasta don’t work for no CIA,
Jah sent us here to show the way.
Rasta don’t work for no politician,
A true Rastaman is a good and upright man
So he will live for evermore,
Through Jah’s mercy, he’ll endure
These
lines echo both Marley’s
“So
Jah Seh“
and
“Rat
Race“
and voice similar sentiments to the one expressed in
“Revolution“
(“Never
trust a politician, they will try to control you forever“).
They testify to Marley’s huge influence at the time on other Reggae
lyricists and should encourage us to remember Bob Marley today,
nearly 30 years after
“Rat
Race“
was originally released.
References
Henke,
Holman. Between Self-Determination and Dependency- Jamaica’s
Foreign Relations,1972-81. Kingston : University of the West
Indies Press, 2000. |
