Who: Winston ‘Peter Tosh’ McIntosh
How He Led: This renowned Jamaican musician wrote and performed songs that served as battle cries against corrupt politicians and music industry executives, and the criminalization of marijuana, a holy sacrament of his Rastafarian faith.
Regularly taken and beaten by the police — often nearly fatally — Tosh continued to perform his songs to bring change to the social structure of Jamaica that pushed poor people, Black people and Rastas to the fray of society through economic oppression and brutality.
“And what belong to I and I
You better, you better give it up to I
‘Cause I don’t want no peace
I need equal rights and justice.”
— “Equal Rights”
“No mind your nationality
You have got the identity of an African…
So don’t care where you come from
As long as you’re a Black man, you’re an African
No mind denomination
That is only segregation, you’re an African.”
— “African”
“Well, talkin’ about Third World, where is the third world and who is the people of the third world? Because if there is a third world, there is a second world, and where is the second world, and if there is a second world, there must be a first world, so where is the first world? So all those things, I don’t use those clauses, unless I know whose terms, what they are meant. Because they are just colonial slave attitude clause, seen? So that people can be isolated from their cultures, by calling themselves third world.”
— Excerpt from an interview with Hank Holmes and Roger Steffens, Contributing Writers for Reggae News
