Wednesday Wisdom

Who?

Johnny Nash was born on August 19, 1940, in Houston, Texas. He grew up surrounded by music, singing in Baptist church choirs from a young age. Nash's music career began in the late 1950s when he started recording as a pop singer. He achieved his first major success in 1957 with the song "A Teenager Sings the Blues." Throughout the 1960s, he released several albums and singles, gaining moderate success and was known for his crooner voice.

In the late 1960s, with his manager Danny Sims, they traveled to Jamacia looking for new sounds and melodies. On Ethiopian Christmas in 1967, Nash was taken by a local disc jockey Neville Willoughby to a “grounation” which is a Rastafarian music and religious event in Trenchtown, a neighborhood in Kingston Jamica known for its musical culture. Nash was first introduced to a young Bob Marley and was quickly impressed with his talent. That night Nash raved to Simms about Marley and implored him to sign him to the label. The next day Bob and Rita Marley along with Bunny Livingston and Peter Tosh visited Nash and Simms to jam, leading to Simms signing Marley as a song writer. This collaboration was not the beginning of reggae but was the start of reggae making its entrance to the international stage.

What he produced

In 1968 Nate “Toots” Hibert and his band The Maytals put out a song “Do the Reggay” which is the first time the word reggae was seen in print. Developed from jazz, blues and calypso music, Jamica was already developing their own brand of music with Ska, Dance Hall and Rocksteady. Reggae music developed from these music styles and the word is derived from Spanish to mean “king of music”. Pioneers to the sound include Lee Scratch Perry, Larry Marshall and the Belltones among others. In 1968 Desmond Deckers put out a single the “Israelites” which went Top 40 in Great Britain, Reggae music was making its way of the tiny island and on its way to becoming a cultural phenomenon.

In 1972 Johnny Nash released his album "I Can See Clearly Now," the title song and single topped the top 100 charts in the United States and several other countries, becoming a timeless classic and selling over a million copies. Included on the album was several of Bob Marleys songs including “Stir it Up’, Guava Jelly” and “You poured sugar on me”, which Marley played on his subsequent albums in the late 70’s when he became an international sensation and put Jamica on the map. In 1993 Jimmy Cliff did a version of “I Can See Nearly Now” for the Jamaican bobsled movie “Cool Runnings”, bringing the song and reggae back into popular culture.

2024-Why you should care

Johnny Nash was one of the first non-Jamaican singers to record reggae music in Kingston, Jamaica. His collaboration with Bob Marley and The Wailers, helped introduce reggae to a wider international audience.

I recall the song from my youth on my way to hockey practice, this song playing on a crackling AM radio in my dad’s car. The songs warm tone and “clear sky” lyrics felt like a stark contrast compared to the cold dark New England winter. Years later, a friend gifted me his CD, sharing that this music was the soundtrack of her youth. Instantly, the fond memories of the song returned with its familiarity and joy.

Why is reggae so ascetically pleasing and why did this song resonate with so many people. Reggae is filled with laid back melodies and infectious grooves, which creates a sense of relaxation and movement at once. The upbeat lyrics of reggae generally emphasize themes of love, social justice and positivity. Johnny Nash’s iconic song starts with one drum beat followed by the reggae bass lines commonly known as “one drop” or in Jamaican patois (language) known as “riddim bass”. Nash’s lyrics lead right into positive vibes and harmony known as “irie” in patois and provides clear imagery of the future.

“I can see clearly now, the rain is gone
I can see all obstacles in my way
Gone are the dark clouds that had me blind
It's gonna be a bright (bright), bright (bright)
Sun-shiny day
It's gonna be a bright (bright), bright (bright)
Sun-shiny day”

The lyrics express a sense of optimism and clarity after overcoming obstacles, anticipating a bright and sunny future ahead. As Johnny Nash discovered in the late 60’s, Jamaica, the little island with the big, big sound also has a lot of positive vibrations to share.

Philosophy is the art of thinking, the building block of progress that shapes critical thinking across economics, ethics, religion, and science. 

Thank you, Dad for the Gift of Curiosity

METAPHYSICS: Literally, the term metaphysics means ‘beyond the physical.’ Typically, this is the branch that most people think of when they picture philosophy. In metaphysics, the goal is to answer what and how questions in life. Who are we, and what are time and space?

LOGIC: The study of reasoning. Much like metaphysics, understanding logic helps to understand and appreciate how we perceive the rest of our world. More than that, it provides a foundation for which to build and interpret arguments and analyses. 

ETHICS: The study of morality, right and wrong, good and evil. Ethics tackles difficult conversations by adding weight to actions and decisions. Politics takes ethics to a larger scale, applying it to a group (or groups) of people. Political philosophers study political governments, laws, justice, authority, rights, liberty, ethics, and much more.

AESTHETICS: What is beautiful? Philosophers try to understand, qualify, and quantify what makes art what it is. Aesthetics also takes a deeper look at the artwork itself, trying to understand the meaning behind it, both art as a whole and art on an individual level. A question an aesthetics philosopher would seek to address is whether or not beauty truly is in the eye of the beholder.

EPISTEMOLOGY: This is the study and understanding of knowledge. The main question is how do we know? We can question the limitations of logic, how comprehension works, and the ability (or perception) to be certain.