{"product_id":"the-book-of-exodus-isbn-9781400052868","title":"The Book of Exodus","description":"\u003cb\u003eA searing portrait of Bob Marley and the making of \u003ci\u003eExodus, Time\u003c\/i\u003e’s best album of the twentieth century—and an acutely perceptive appreciation of his musical and spiritual legacy\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e“Finely reported, vividly written, and politically astute, Vivien Goldman travels with Bob Marley on the intimate journey that led him to become the voice of the Exodus.” —Mariane Pearl, author of \u003ci\u003eA Mighty Heart: The Brave Life and Death of My Husband, Danny Pearl\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eReggae superstar Bob Marley is one of our most important and influential artists, and his 1977 album \u003ci\u003eExodus\u003c\/i\u003e is the most lasting testament to his social conscience. Recorded in London after an assassination attempt on his life sent Marley into exile from Jamaica, it remains a masterpiece of spiritual exploration.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eVivien Goldman was the first journalist to introduce mass white audiences to the Rasta sounds of Bob Marley. Throughout the late 1970s, Goldman was a fly on the wall as she watched reggae grow and evolve, and charted the careers of many of its superstars, especially Bob Marley. So close was Vivien to Bob and the Wailers that she was a guest at his Kingston home just days before gunmen came in a rush to kill “The Skip.” Now, in \u003ci\u003eThe Book of Exodus\u003c\/i\u003e, Goldman chronicles the making of this album, from its conception in Jamaica to the raucous but intense all-night studio sessions in London.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBut \u003ci\u003eThe Book of Exodus\u003c\/i\u003e is so much more than a making-of-a-record story. This remarkable book takes us through the history of Jamaican music, Marley’s own personal journey from the Trench Town ghetto to his status as global superstar, as well as Marley’s deep spiritual practice of Rastafari and the roots of this religion. Goldman also traces the biblical themes of the Exodus story, and its practical relevance to us today, through various other art forms, leading up to and culminating with Exodus.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eNever before has there been such an intimate, first-hand portrait of Marley’s spirituality, his political involvement, and his life in exile in London, leading up to his triumphant return to the stage in Jamaica at the Peace Concert of 1978.“Vivien Goldman is a soldier who understood where we were coming from with our music and spread the message with her writing. She is on the Zion Train.” —Aston “Family Man” Barrett, cofounder and bass player of the Wailers\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Finely reported, vividly written, and politically astute, Vivien Goldman travels with Bob Marley on the intimate journey that led him to become the voice of the \u003ci\u003eExodus\u003c\/i\u003e. A fundamental human conflict, \u003ci\u003eExodus\u003c\/i\u003e expresses the eternal quest for land, identity, and in Marley’s case, a quest for harmony.” —Mariane Pearl, author of \u003ci\u003eA Mighty Heart: The Brave Life and Death of My Husband, Danny Pearl\u003c\/i\u003eVivien Goldman is a writer, broadcaster, and musician who has devoted much of her work to Afro-Caribbean and global music. She is the adjunct professor of punk and reggae at NYU’s Clive Davis Department of Recorded Music. Originally from London, Goldman now resides in New York City. This is her fifth book.Chapter 1\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    SEND US ANOTHER BROTHER MOSES\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    “I was a stranger in a strange land,” said Bob Marley to me softly. He   quoted the biblical verse of Exodus 2:22 almost to himself, intimately,   as if the verse had been a familiar friend during his London exile   following the attempted assassination on his life that had happened   three years before, just yards away.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    The brand-new blond wood studio we were sitting in for this interview   for a 1979 cover story for the oldest British rock weekly, Melody   Maker, indicated that Marley was at a height of his career,   artistically and professionally. Personally, too—we could hear children   shouting excitedly as they played outside his house at 56 Hope Road,   Kingston. He was about to record Survival, the first album he would   ever make in his own studio, and it had taken him more than three   decades to get there. He had truly survived a dangerous passage, and   now, looking back, it was Exodus’s well-worn words that made sense of   his experiences.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    A chapter a day is the Rasta way, and Bob never went anywhere without   his old King James Bible. Personalized with photos of Haile Selassie,   it would lie open beside him, a ribbon marking the place, as he played   his guitar by candlelight in whichever city he found himself. He had a   way of isolating himself with the book, withdrawing from the other   laughing musicians on the tour bus to ponder a particular passage, then   challenging his bred’ren to debate it as vigorously as if they were   playing soccer. Hurled into this unexpected journey, Exodus spoke to   him now more than ever. Experiencing his own exile, accompanied by his   old cohorts the Barrett brothers and Seeco, the grizzled Dread elder of   the tribe, the ancestral narrative held a new meaning for Bob.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    At the time it was recorded, Chris Blackwell recalls, it wasn’t even a   given that “Exodus” would actually be the album’s title track. Only a   very precise prophet could have determined that, a quarter century on,   Bob and the Wailers’ anthems would be hailed by Time magazine as the   Album of the Century; but Bob knew its significance. In the coming   years, the themes that summoned Bob—such as repatriation to a place   where you really belong—would become increasingly relevant to us all as   the global population grew more dislocated and deracinated, and as   refugees in ever increasing numbers would surge around the world, often   looking to the Americas and Europe in their restless search for a home.   Fleeing for a better life, or simply a life, they all rise to the   challenge Bob chants in “Exodus”: “Are you satisfied with the life   you’re living?”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Exodus was a natural theme for Marley. Its issues of power, betrayal,   hope, disillusionments, and the search for serenity were all uppermost   in his mind as he created the Exodus album with the Wailers. The Book   of Exodus deals with leaving familiar oppression behind, braving the   unknown, and letting faith guide you to a brighter future. These ideas   have increasing relevance as we are hit by a contemporary litany of   troubles that can be read like the plagues at a Seder, the communal   Passover meal at which, every spring for the last two thousand years,   the escape from Egypt has been reenacted, sometimes at great peril,   wherever there are Jews. As each plague is named, you delicately dip a   finger in your glass of wine and let a drop drip down for each disaster   inflicted on the Egyptians. It’s understood that the red wine   symbolizes a drop of blood. Today’s plagues, to which the ideas of   Exodus very much apply, might read thus: wars; starvation; pestilences   such as AIDS, malaria, and TB; genocide; ethnic cleansing; ecological   collapse; greed; corruption; and disasters both natural and unnatural.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    My intention in writing this book is to show the significance of Exodus   both in Marley and the Wailers’ musical canon and in the man’s life.   The light of the eternal themes of the Bible’s Book of Exodus shines in   the Wailers’ work of that name, just as artists have reflected it   throughout history. This work aims to show how the biblical narrative   of the Hebrews’ flight from Pharaoh, orchestrated by Moses in   conjunction with God, interlinks with Marley’s liberating message and   the Rastas’ dream of the African diaspora’s return to the Motherland,   inspired by their deity Haile Selassie.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Like the souls the Kabbalists describe as sparks of light, many   artistic and cultural endeavors revolve around Exodus. By telling some   of their stories, I hope to ignite those sparks into a steady flame   that illuminates the universal meaning of both Exodus and the life and   work of Bob Marley.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    The narrative of the Hebrew Exodus from Egypt that comforted and   strengthened Marley in his time of affliction is so graphic that it   lends itself easily to a visual treatment. See the frames flash past:   The organized slaughter of Hebrew male babies in the mean slave   quarters, at Pharaoh’s command. The Israelite baby bobbing in the   basket on the river, hidden by reeds, watched from a distance by his   concerned sister, Miriam. She leaves only when she’s seen him   discovered by Pharaoh’s daughter. Once adopted, Moses the Hebrew   foundling is thrust into a classic role-reversal situation—the slave   turned ruler. Then comes the political awakening, when Moses sees an   Israelite slave abused by an Egyptian, and slays the oppressor.   Struggling to hide the heavy corpse out of town in the sand, and having   to deal with the knowledge that he too can kill. Moses’ rural retreat   as a shepherd in Midion, and his first marriage, to Zipporah, the   daughter of Jethro, who would become his mentor. The trippy encounter   with a blazing bush that speaks for Hashem—it’s all like something at a   Burning Man festival. Afterward, anyone can see his intimate exposure   to glory, burned right on his face; Moses never looks the same after   being so close to the celestial fire. To hamper social ease further,   Moses stammers and is hard to understand. He relies on his brother,   Aaron, as his lieutenant.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Still, Moses has unbeatable access to God, and carries the whole road   map to freedom in his head. An effective leader, he wheels, deals, and   hustles his tribe out of four hundred years of familiar captivity, in   the same quest for the Promised Land that Bob Marley sings about in   Exodus, except that Bob calls his destination Africa, the land of his   father, Jah Rastafari. Moses’ tools include the plagues, which   intensify from creepiness to cataclysm and whose grotesqueries,   including insect swarms and infanticide, are still the stuff of horror   flicks. There are the great Exodus set pieces that Cecil B. DeMille’s   Cinemascope movie The Ten Commandments visualized so vividly in 1956:   the Red Sea rearing into froth-topped liquid cliffs, and the tables   turning when the freed captives see their old slave drivers drown.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    With Moses leading the great trek, there is much dissension in the   ranks, as the Hebrews dissed their deity, Hashem, with raves around the   golden calf, exactly the sort of pagan idolatry that the patriarch,   Abraham’s One God, had warned them about. With classic timing, the   tribe unleashed their debauch while Moses was descending the mountain   carrying the tablets with the Ten Commandments, the template for most   of the world’s belief systems. Making matters worse, Aaron had   apparently colluded in their defection from the new idea of the One   God. It was when Moses, mad as only he could be, confronted the   wrongdoers and smashed the sacred stone tablets before them that the   transgressors finally felt the sting of their betrayal. Perhaps a   defining moment in the history of guilt, it was only then that the   ragtag Hebrews became the Jewish people.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Then, Moses’ final frustration, the last time God shows Moses his   place. At his final face-to-face meeting with his Creator, Moses learns   that he will not be allowed entry into Canaan, the Promised Land. He   will have to find satisfaction in a glimpse from a mountaintop and the   bittersweet realization that though he has hauled his tribe of   fractious Hebrews out of slavery, Moses still won’t get to taste that   milk and honey he’s been craving through forty years of false starts   and wandering in the wilderness.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    And the movement has never stopped. For refugees from Cambodia, Rwanda,   Bosnia, all the world’s dispossessed populations shifting and scuffling   restlessly round alien territories in search of shelter, the Bible’s   Exodus suggests a possibility of finally finding a safe dwelling. In   the trajectory of Moses’ tale—the man who makes it all happen, but   ultimately only gets to glimpse the home he’d dreamed of—we learn that   even being part of the survival process can be a privilege, its own   reward. For those in rage, turmoil, or despair, Exodus and its echoes   in the Psalms offer a sense of a solution, or at least the   encouragement of inspiration.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Moses’ drastic reinvention as a reluctant, ambivalent leader   demonstrates and represents all human potential for resurrection,   change, and spiritual growth. The lessons Moses learned and delivered   as the Ten Commandments serve as a fundamental moral yardstick for the   dominant religious expressions that are collectively called   Mosaic—Christianity, Islam, and Judaism.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    The transformation implicit in the Exodus saga is reflected in our   frontiers and cities. Both pleasure and conflict come from these new   meshings and confrontations. Cultures collide and repel, or commingle   and integrate, and new tribes take shape. Fresh strata of society   shift, sift, and settle down as restlessly as grinding tectonic plates.   Just when everything seems calm on the surface, communities seething   with newness can suddenly convulse in a volcanic jolt of shock. That’s   when bombs blow and blood flows. But after the pain and rage, always,   is the hope for a smoother tomorrow. It is a magnet, the hope embodied   in Exodus’s saga of a wandering tribe persistently following their   faith to arrive at a place where they can live freely. And if you only   get to glimpse the Promised Land from afar, isn’t there some   achievement in just having got that far, and having helped to bring   about that change?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    There is an exhilarating promise of emerging into a new and better life   on the other side, but even the bravest can feel frightened at leaping   off the sharp edge of their bad reality into the dense cloud of the   unknown. Yet none of the potential downsides of leaving the life you   know can ultimately deter children of Exodus. Not the threat of living   outside the law as refugee or illegal immigrant, the loneliness and   longing for family and the familiar, or the strong possibility of   confronting new obstacles.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    The word exodus is now routinely used to describe any mass departure,   whether it’s stars from a Hollywood agency, Israelis pulling out of   Gaza, or New Orleans residents begging for a bus out of the Superdome   to get somewhere, anywhere, away from the horror. Then, now, and   always, Exodus suggests grueling trek for survival.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Some follow the idea of Exodus but never even get to see their Promised   Land from afar. Roasted in a truck left in the sun at a border, drowned   as a homemade raft sinks, or shot just yards away from freedom, every   fallen refugee who dies chasing freedom is an Exodus martyr.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Yet within every belief system that identifies with Exodus, including   Jews, Christians, Muslims, and Rastas, the dominant narrative of Exodus   has a profound subplot: that great forty-year trek through the   wilderness can also be a journey within oneself.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    The drama of Exodus has a special meaning and offers a seductive sense   of wish fulfillment for Bob Marley, and indeed any socially conscious   artist’s primary constituency: the sufferers, the second-class   citizens, denied a passport, whose movements or potential development   are restricted; or anyone locked in a life-or-death struggle with a   dictator, or just with a discouraging system.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    By plugging into the ancestral sacred escape depicted in the Bible’s   Book of Exodus, Marley was well aware of participating in a   pre-Christian tradition: using Exodus’s dynamic saga of Moses leading   the Israelite slaves’ escape from Egypt as a shorthand, or template,   for rebel music. Marley’s Exodus has provoked reflection and an   artistic response from all manner of artistic and political folk as   well as religious people, and is a common thread linking seemingly very   different lives. Enslaved Africans on the plantations of the American   South turned to the story of Exodus and called on Moses to lead them in   spirituals such as “Let My People Go.” Modern-day refugees and rebels   in the front-line states of southern Africa (especially Zimbabwe), in   Nicaragua and Poland, in Palestine and Israel all turned to Marley to   articulate their existence. When Marley himself turned to Exodus for   the same reason, the world embraced him as never before.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    All these Exodus avatars were tuning in to the same fundamental   frequency—the inspirational idea of Moses and his ragtag crew of   recently freed Israelites. In his song “Exodus,” Bob Marley related   that ancestral movement to the travels and travels of his own tribe,   Jah People. They actually make it out of slavery and start life anew,   in freedom, self-determined in their own place, led by Moses under the   direction of their one deity. Also known as “Hashem,” “He who was, is,   and will be,” and “the One whose name must not be uttered,” the One God   is exultantly hailed by Rastafarians as Jah!\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Having been privileged to share Bob Marley and the Wailers’ Exodus   cycle in Kingston, London, and Europe, I originally wanted simply to   tell the record’s story in this book. But as I researched, I found that   the social, political, cultural, and spiritual implications of the   album went much further than could be conveyed in a conventional   musical story. The Wailers’ popularity had spread steadily beyond their   original West Indian and student constituency since the band began in   the early 1960s. But the vision, passion, and clarity of Exodus, and   the band’s adept absorption of new textures, rhythms, and technologies   into their reggae, turned Exodus into a truly important artistic   statement and a pivotal release that consolidated Bob Marley and the   Wailers’ career.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    In an astonishing discussion with the Wailers’ bass player, Family Man   Barrett, he explained to me how specifically he and Bob had chosen to   build a new link in a conceptual chain of creation as old as the Bible   when they recorded their Rasta anthem, “Exodus.” Discovering the   connections between the members of the tribe of Exodus, from whatever   century or country, and seeing their progress somehow refracted in   Bob’s and the Wailers’ own experiences showed how often relationships   and situations that seem specific and very much of their time are   actually eternal.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Ironically, the immense publicity surrounding Bob’s narrow escape from   death, and the sensational media scrutiny over his romance with the   Miss World of the time, Cindy Breakspeare, catapulted Marley from the   entertainment pages to the front-page headlines in virtually every   international publication. So in trying to silence the Tuff Gong, his   enemies just turned up his volume.","brand":"Crown","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46301916823781,"sku":"NP9781400052868","price":18.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9781400052868.jpg?v=1767738461","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/products\/the-book-of-exodus-isbn-9781400052868","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}