Redemption Songs

Covering or treating one of the most powerfully beautiful, yet simple songs of the 20th century requires great chutzpah or great stupidity or both. Bob Marley’s haunting lyric and simple guitar accompaniment make any rendition of “Redemption Song” a challenge. Despite their masterful treatment of the lyric, Joe Strummer and Johnny Cash, due to who they are, fail to level their rendition with Marley’s work.
As this lyric is essentially a slave narrative, “Old pirates, yes, they rob I; / Sold I to the merchant ships” (1-2), Cash and Strummer’s voices, as they’re white, are less valuable than Marley’s. And what of African-American Stevie Wonder? His pseudo-gospel rendition of the song exalts in the celebratory nature of the chorus while totally missing the tragedy entrenched in the verses. Wonder completely botches his rendition, and, as a result, is barely worth mentioning in an analysis of the piece. The simple, uneducated diction of the narrator belies the complexity of the story that the song tells. As a song of overcoming, the narrative emphasizes not only the overcoming of physical slavery, but also the psychological slavery associated with being a part of an oppressive system. While the pain in Strummer’s, and particularly Cash’s, voices appeals to the pathos of the audience, Marley’s raspy storytelling grabs his audience with deep compassion for the oppressed as well as it appeals to an ethos that all humans deserve physical and ideological freedom.
Looking at the notion of redemption as freeing oneself “from the consequences of sin,” “Redemption Song” emphasizes a dual responsibility, that of the oppressor and the oppressed. The second verse castigates the oppressed, “How long shall they kill our prophets, / While we stand aside and look?” (19-20), for inaction even as the first verse points out the hypocritical nature of the colonizers, who offered salvation with the Bible shortly before conquering with sword and shackles. Marley’s voice matters, as a Caribbean whose ancestors, more than likely, made their way across the Atlantic on a slave ship in a much deeper way than the voices of the Anglo artists. This is true, even though Cash and Strummer, by addressing the narrative so directly and honestly, speak to the redemption that the oppressors may potentially be seeking.
So, yes, speaker does matter. How a speaker gives voice to a message determines aspects of how an audience will react; however, who a speaker is must equally be taken into account. In a simple way, who a speaker is in all her or his complexity will determine how deeply an audience will react.