THE MUSIC WAS NEVER NEUTRAL
Music & Politics
Campaign anthems, radio bans, garrison geography and artists courted or endangered by the association — from the 1972 Bandwagon and the Smile Jamaica shooting to the One Love Peace Concert and the election-dubplate argument that returns every cycle.
13 records · curated by the atlas editors
The through-line: why the two were never separable in the first place.
event · Well supportedPNP Bandwagon (1972)The 1972 campaign that made popular music a formal instrument of Jamaican electioneering.
law policy · ProbablePolitical and colonial-era radio bans of Jamaican popular songs (1960s-1970s)What the airwaves would not carry — the bans that marked which sentiments were acceptable.
event · Well supportedSmile Jamaica concert and the shooting at 56 Hope Road (1976)December 1976: gunmen at 56 Hope Road, two days before the concert. Marley played anyway.
event · Well supportedOne Love Peace Concert (1978)April 1978: Marley joining Manley's and Seaga's hands on stage — the image the whole argument returns to.
concept · ProbablePeace concert cultureThe peace concert as a recurring Jamaican form, and the limits of what a stage can settle.
concept · Well supportedPolitical tribalism and musicHow party allegiance mapped onto communities, dances and the routes records travelled.
place · Well supportedTivoli GardensThe garrison as a place in the music, not only in the politics.
film · Well supportedBetter Mus' ComeStorm Saulter's film dramatising the 1978 Green Bay period — the era rendered as narrative.
recording · Well supported"Better Must Come" — Delroy WilsonThe Delroy Wilson record the 1972 campaign adopted, and the film took its title from.