A Brief History of Seven Killings

So here we are, 35 years after his death, and Bob Marley is still the only bona fide rock superstar to ever come out of a so-called third-world country. (Nothing against Fela, but how many times have you heard football crowds spontaneously sing "Zombie"?) Legend (and you'll never be able to not see that title as ironic again) is one of the best-selling Greatest Hits albums of all time and it is, of course, conspicuously free of songs like "Crazy Baldheads", "Rat Race", "Them Belly Full (But We Hungry)", "War", "Concrete Jungle", "Burnin' and Lootin'"... The Bob Marley of popular Western culture, the decontextualized "Get Up, Stand Up" and "Buffalo Soldier" notwithstanding, comes across as a non-threatening teddy bear singing about birds and love, his rastafarianism as Woodstock hippyisms, and Jamaica as a tropical paradise of beaches and gentle stoners with funny accents who are only too happy to serve any white tourists.

That’s what happens when you personify hopes and dreams in one person. He becomes nothing more than a literary device.

A Brief History... is not about Bob Marley. He's a constant presence in it, although never mentioned by name (he's "The Singer", too mythical to even need a name, a huge whale shark in a small pond of hungry piranhas; there's a difference between the stars and the superstars, between those you remember and those who shape an entire narrative), but he's not the subject of it. It's the failed assassination attempt against him in December of 1976 that provides the centre of the novel, but James uses it as a lynchpin to tell a much larger story. Several times I find myself thinking of The Wire, both in terms of scope and in terms of characterisation; this is praise, in my book.

And killing don’t need no reason. This is ghetto. Reason is for rich people. We have madness.

Really, the sheer ambition of A Brief History (which, to make the obvious point, is 700 pages long and covers several decades, arguably centuries, of history) is staggering, but not nearly impressive as the ease with which James pulls it off. Watch the way he shifts narrators (some of whom are long dead, others who die along the way, and some, miraculously, who survive). A dead politician, the boss of a Kingston ghetto, the local CIA operative, a Rolling Stone journalist born 10 years too late, a woman who just knew Marley for a night and now has to spend her life running, various hitmen and dealers and slum kids who are all part of a bigger story but also have their own lives to save or lose. Watch the way he paces the story, it's been a while since I read a literary novel with such great command of the humble cliffhanger, yet every chapter here adds to the depth of the story, tells us something new, shows us a new angle, even if it's just that a character is refusing to see something new. Watch the patois; no empty sacrifice on the cheap altar of authenticity, language shapes the world and vice versa. James not only lets his characters be eloquent in a mother tongue that most of his readers (it's an American novel in the sense that all expat novels are) will automatically think of as "broken" English (much like the CIA operatives in Kingston don't see why the Jamaicans can't see that they have their best interest in mind), and when they shift from one dialect to another, watch out because something is shifting with them.

People stupid. The dream didn't leave, people just don't know a nightmare when they right in the middle of one.

Nothing is allowed to lie still here. Every concept of class, race, gender, nation, sexuality, faith is turned over and smashed into each other. The good-natured reggae music are both rebel songs and homophobic screeds. A religion that promises exodus and freedom, but expects women to serve. (Much like some other holy texts you could mention.) I find myself wondering if this is an American novel or a Jamaican one; on the one hand, there's both Faulkner and DeLillo and Morrison lurking between the lines... On the other hand, few American novels would be so painfully aware of the influence of America on others. The question is, would it be possible to write the Great Jamaican Novel without Marley? Then again, why on Earth would you want to do that, when you'd have to forego things like this?

Three girls from Kashmir sling on bass, guitar and drums, fresh faces brimming out of burkas, propped up and held together by a backdrop of the Singer streaked in red, green and gold stripes, thick like pillars. They call themselves First Ray of Light, soul sisters to the Singer smiling with the rising sun. Out of a wrapped face comes a melody so fragile it almost vanishes in the air. But it lands on a drum that kicks the groove back up to where the song lingers, sweeps and soothes. Now the Singer is a balm to spread over broken countries. Soon, the men who kill girls issue a holy order and boys all over the valley vow to clean their guns, and stiffen their cocks, to hold down and take away. The Singer is support, but he cannot shield, and the band breaks away.

But in another city, another valley, another ghetto, another slum, another favela, another township, another intifada, another war, another birth, somebody is singing Redemption Song, as if the Singer wrote it for no other reason but for this sufferah to sing, shout, whisper, weep, bawl, and scream right here, right now.

There's so much passion in this novel, so much anger and love and grief and beauty. And James makes it all sing.