Redemption Song by Bob Marley

Diagnosed with cancer, in pain and facing his own mortality, Bob Marley wrote “Redemption Song” in 1979. Marley had already changed the way the world viewed Reggae music, Jamaica and the Rastafari movement.

With insightful lyrics and a sound that popular culture had never heard before, Bob Marley penetrated deep into the American consciousness, which is evident in his greatest hits album, Legend selling over ten million copies in the United States.

Unlike earlier songs, which featured his band The Wailers, Marley recorded “Redemption Song,” recorded for his seventh album Uprising with a simple acoustic guitar accompaniment. It’s simple presentations echoes back to American folk singers and early works by Bob Dylan filled with social commentary and powerful imagery. There’s something about redemption song that is unique, not only in the protest music but in Bob Marley. Earlier Marley had called out to the world to “Get Up Stand Up” but in “Redemption Song” there was a softer tone, a more personal statement.

Inspired by a speech by Marcus Garvey, urging people to emancipate themselves from mental slavery, Marley composed a song of freedom, a song of hope. He begins in the first verse singing about pirates taking him into physical slavery but “the hand of the almighty” keeping him strong as hi moves forward in his generation. He invites us to sing in his song of freedom because he states “all I ever have, redemption songs.

In the second verse, Marley urges us to free ourselves from a different kind of slavery to free our minds from “mental slavery.” He redirects our fear of atomic energy as they can’t stop who we are and asks us “how long shall they kill our prophet, while we stand aside and look.”

Marley is asking is how we can stand by and watch the things that mean most to us be killed. Instead of focusing on outward fears of nuclear energy, Marley is telling us to look for our spiritual larders, protect what is most important. At the end of the verse Marley states that other people say that we simply have a role to “fulfill the book.” All we are doing is playing falling into place with what others have planned. In this way we truly are slaves and its up to us to free ourselves for this new kind of slavery.

Marley sings that all he ever has is “redemption songs” but “Redemption Song” isn’t one of them. The redemption that Marley asks us to seek is not found in the words and melody of this song, they are found within ourselves. When we finally get there, we can join Marley but until then what we have is this call to freedom.

As the final song on his last album, “Redemption Song” is a powerful statement of the nature of change. Marley can’t make the world change, he can only invite us to think about our lives and do something different. Many people have answered to call to help him sing with him and maybe that’s all we need to do to change the world not through a grandiose speech but through a simple song of freedom.

Trapped by Jimmy Cliff/Bruce Springsteen

"Trapped" Jimmy Cliff live performance
“Trapped” Bruce Springsteen 2008 live performance
"Trapped" Bruce Springsteen Born In the U.S. A. tour live performance

You never know what you are going to get at a Bruce Springsteen concert. With over two hundred songs in their repertoire, Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band have a remarkable amount of songs that they can perform. In the earlier days, Springsteen would throw out random songs to his band to play on stage that they often had never rehearsed just for the fun of it.

At age 59, an age when most people decided to play it safe, Springsteen has started taking request. Since the beginning of the Working On A Dream tour, Springsteen has taken time during each show to collect signs from the audience that have requests on them. Some of these signs request old Springsteen favorites while other signs ask Springsteen and the E Street Band to play songs that they have never played before. These performances have a garage band-like energy as the band rocks out to songs from “Wild Thing” by the Troggs to the Clash’s “London Calling.”


During last Tuesday night’s performance at the United Center, Springsteen again took requests. He played “Candy’s Room” responding to birthday wish on a sign and rocked out to “Mony, Mony.”

Any doubt that I had whether Springsteen and the E Street Band was actually playing some of these request for the first time ever were blown away as I watched Springsteen try to figure out what key to play the song. He asked Steve Van Zandt, one of the guitarists in the E Street Band to find the starting chord from a snarled tone that Springsteen kept repeating. Once they settled on the key, he warned that the song may “have a weird part in the middle.” If you ask anyone who saw the E Street Band on Tuesday, they will tell you the performance of “Mony, Mony” was awesome and that the rocking bridge was one of the highlights of the evening.

Out of all the songs that request that Springsteen played there was only one that I didn’t know. Now listening to songs that you don’t know at a Springsteen concert in the United Center can be challenging. It is be difficult to know what Bruce is singing with the speed that he moves through lyrics in some songs and the mediocre acoustics of the United Center. Because of this, I highly recommend that if someone is not familiar with Springsteen’s music and is going to one of his concerts, that they prep themselves and get to know a couple of his more regularly performed songs to enhance the experiences.

So when Springsteen pulled out a sign from his stack that he had collected that had the word “trapped” on it and the crowd went berserk, I was baffled.

Honestly, when I heard the chorus with the word “trapped” being repeated, I thought it was lame. Bruce usually has more subtle and creative ways to describe the feeling of entrapment. I thought the rise through the chorus was powerful and the sudden drop into the verses was effective but overall, the song did not feel significant.

When I woke up Thursday, two days after the concert, one line from “Trapped” kept rolling around in my head: “And it seemed the game I played made you strong.” On the way out the door to go to work, I hesitated and went to my computer to see if by some chance I had a recording of “Trapped.” I did have a live performance of it that I never got around to listening to. After a quick internet search, I found out to my surprise that Bruce did not compose the song and that it was originally written and performed Jimmy Cliff. I downloaded the song from itunes, loaded it on my ipod and ran out to my car.

For Springsteen, a man that rarely performs music that he does not compose, it seemed odd that “Trapped” which he featured in his Born In U.S.A. tour would play such a prominent role in his catalog. Well, after listening to Jimmy Cliff’s recording of the song it made perfect sense.

Jimmy Cliff is a reggae artists and one of most revered Jamaican musicians. He is best known for his cover of “I Can See Clearly Now.” Jimmy Cliff’s composed and recorded “Trapped” for his 1989 album, Images.

Listening to Cliff’s performance the optimism of the song seems to shine through the song. The relaxed reggae beat and Cliff’s gentle soulful voice expresses a sense of calm reflection. Springsteen’s voice on the other hand seems to dwell on the darkness of the situation and feelings of regret which permeate his interpretation.

Cliff is able to express similar feelings to Springsteen but with fewer words. Maybe that is what attracting Springsteen to this song. With all that is going on in the world, sometimes Springsteen’s metaphors are not as powerful as a man singing the word “trapped.”

It’s funny how it took listening to the original recording of “Trapped” to fall in love with Springsteen’s recording. Sometimes people you meet simply make sense when you get to know their parents. In a similar way sometimes it takes getting to know the original recording of a song to find meaning in a different version.

Part of me wishes I had known “Trapped” before I heard Springsteen perform it live, but I’m glad I came to love this song as I did. As great as it is to fall in love at first sight, it’s even more rewarding to change how we feel about things in our lives, giving us confidence in our lives that no matter what how we feel in life we are never trapped in our emotions.