The Wailers is a Jamaican band created in 1963 and mainly known for their reggae music. Composed of Neville Livingston, Winston Hubert and one of the most iconic reggae singer, Bob Marley. They change their name several times, becoming “ Bob Marley and The Wailers ”, then The Wailers again and so on and so forth but it’s The Wailers who became successful in 1972, with their album Catch A Fire. To make the most of their growing fame, they release Burnin’ in 1973, an album in which we can find two of their bigger hits, I Shot The Sheriff and Get Up, Stand Up. Today, we decided to tell you about the second one that deals with fight against racism and oppression.
The song Get up stand up, can be perceived as anti-religious which is kind of surprising considering the fact that Bob Marley ( who wrote the lyrics ) was a really religious man. First of all, what we need to understand is the personal background of the singer. At that time, Marley visited Haiti and thus witnessed the poverty and the struggles of the Haitian population. The Jamaican singer’s song deals with how urgent it is to take actions and to resist : in other words to « get up, stand up, stand up for your rights ».
Later in the song he explains that we shouldn’t relay on religion and hope for a life after death. Instead we should fight for a better world by ourselves and not to wait for God to do something for us.
"But if you know what life is worth, You will look for yours on earth " This song can be perceived as a critic of religious people’s hypocrisy who tricked us into believing their false teachings. " you can fool some people sometimes, but you can’t fool all the people all the time ".
According to the singer we should learn to live before learning to pray because only mankind’s power can brings peace and equality on earth.
To sum up, nobody should stand being treated unequally and it’s time to take actions in order to make Earth looks like heaven instead of waiting for a life after death.
If you loved this song we recommend you the group UB40 which plays the same genre of music.
