Some of the most powerful lines in reggae were not written in a studio. They were spoken — one in a recording booth in 1921, one at the United Nations in 1963 — and decades later a singer from Kingston turned both into anthems the whole world knows.
This is the story behind the first episode of Deep Roots, our new series tracing the real voices and real footage behind the music.
The voice from 1921
Marcus Garvey was born in St. Ann’s Bay, Jamaica, in 1887, and built the Universal Negro Improvement Association into the largest Black movement of its time. Film of Garvey survives — the famous UNIA parades through Harlem in the 1920s, Garvey himself in his plumed uniform at the head of the procession. Less known is that his voice survives too, on a phonograph recording from 1921, setting out the objects of the UNIA and counting the people it was built for: the millions across the United States, the West Indies, South and Central America, and Africa.
In 1937, speaking in Sydney, Nova Scotia, Garvey delivered the sentence that would outlive everything else he said: “Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery; none but ourselves can free our minds.” In 1980, Bob Marley carried that line into “Redemption Song,” the closing track of Uprising — Garvey’s words, word for word, sung back to the world.
The speech that became “War”
Haile Selassie I was crowned Emperor of Ethiopia on November 2, 1930 — this week marks 96 years since that coronation. On October 4, 1963, he stood at the rostrum of the United Nations in New York and addressed the General Assembly. His argument was simple and absolute: lasting peace is impossible while any philosophy holds one race superior and another inferior — until that philosophy is finally and permanently discredited and abandoned, there will be war.
Marley set the speech to music. “War,” from the 1976 album Rastaman Vibration, follows Selassie’s text so closely that the Emperor is credited as the song’s lyricist. Archival film of the 1963 address survives in the UN’s own audiovisual library — the Emperor at the rostrum, delivering the words himself.
Why Deep Roots exists
Reggae has always carried history inside the music. Deep Roots is where we slow down and prove it — real footage, verified by sight; the actual voices, in their own words; and the line from a speech in 1921 or 1963 to the chorus everybody sings today.
Watch Episode 1 above, and tell us in the comments: which anthem carries more weight for you — “Redemption Song” or “War”?
Deep Roots runs every other Sunday evening. Episode 2 — Selassie at the League of Nations in 1936 — arrives November 16.