Peter Tosh, No More Auction Block For Me
By Herbie Miller
Sunday, November 19, 2006

I wonder how many readers picked up on the nuanced punch line that opened Tanya Batson-Savage's recent article Icon for sale. Ms Batson-Savage wrote: "A piece of reggae history will step on the cyberspace 'auction block' when Peter Tosh's Stratocaster M-16 guitar is auctioned by the Flashpoint Film Festival."

There is keen insight and pathos in the writer's use of the phrase 'auction block', for it not only riffs on the slave auction block, but also announces the fact that like blacks of a not-too-distant past, another piece of our material national culture will most likely be sold to the highest bidder. Not that the bid will or won't be high. What is more important is that such an artifact is beyond monetary value. For more than reasons that can be argued here, the auctioning of Tosh's M-16 guitar is disappointing news.


Peter Tosh displays and clutches the famous M-16 guitar which shortly will be auctioned for charity.
Peter Tosh was a visual and vocal reminder of the role the 'auction block' played in the distribution of millions of Africans across Europe and the Americas to toil as slaves. In tunes like Arise Blackman Arise, Black Man Know Thy Self, Equal Rights, Apartheid, African and Four Hundred Years, Tosh taught the world lessons about the slave trade and the plight of 400 years of racial oppression endured by African and diasporic blacks.

The auction block was the junction from where Africans were sent in different directions separating them from family and compatriot, most never again to make contact or see each other. The auctioning of Tosh's guitar invokes the auctioning of Africans and new world blacks. It brings back memories of being sold because of one's opposition and resistance to enslavement. In particular, it is symbolic of the selling away of particular leaders among the enslaved who stood for equal rights and justice.

The Stepping Razor, as Batson correctly states, 'is one of the music's most revolutionary figures' and the shaping of the guitar into a gun was by no means a cheap attempt at either celebrating violence or seeking hype. Instead, the M-16-shaped guitar clicks easily into Tosh's militant stance, using music to battle injustice the world over. If ever there was an irony, here is one. Especially because some Africans were culpable in the rounding up and selling into bondage others from among them, it is more heart-wrenching that it is a member of Tosh's family that now offers the freedom fighter's symbolic weapon into bondage. In all likelihood, the guitar will be shipped away, possibly never to be seen again by Jamaicans and African peoples, after the sale.

Like those Africans in cahoots with Europeans on the slave coast who kept locked away in dungeons others they claimed to own, who would later be shackled and shipped away, so too has Tosh's common-law wife, Andrea (Merlene) Brown claimed that she in fact, owned the M-16 guitar, which was locked away in a closet in the United States for the past 19 years, become the metaphor for the unfortunate African.

While there are no laws or rules that prevent survivors from disposing of their material legacy in the way most befitting of them, there also is the consideration of the legacy we wish to preserve for historic posterity for and as a nation. On the other hand, if material bequeathed must be sold to provide sustenance to the beneficiary, then so be it. In the case of Tosh, lamentably, this ought not be the case.

In a recent argument, I questioned the administration or lack thereof of Tosh's estate. If there was one, I pondered their astuteness. I lamented the quality of representation and lack of recognition Peter Tosh's personal identity, artistic legacy and memory receive in Jamaica and by the Jamaican public at large. The auctioning on ebay of Tosh's guitar is an act that reiterates my concern.

As much as claims to the effect that proceeds from the sale are in aid of The Penfield Children's Home and The Cedar Valley Home, the sale from Peter's guitar will pale against the residuals from royalty his music should be earning. If only from the sales of recordings as one-third of the one of the twentieth century's seminal recording groups, The Wailers, which included Bob Marley, Tosh's more illustrious and recognised brethren and Bunny Wailer, the group's only surviving voice, Tosh's financial legacy should be able to support these homes.

With astute handling of his estate, donations can be made not only to charities, but also to the well-being of his children, their mothers and his own mother. Get Up Stand Up, Stand Up For Your Rights,
sang Peter Tosh, who no doubt would be physically demonstrating the advice of that mantra were he here today.

Those of us as Jamaicans, particularly musicians and supporters of our musicians, and those concerned with the survival of our national heritage, must now Get Up Stand Up, Stand Up For Your Rights. Let's save Tosh's legacy and a piece of Jamaica's heritage.

Herbie Miller is a cultural historian specialising in Slave culture, Caribbean identity and jazz. He was Peter Tosh's manager. Copyright 2006 herbimill@aol.com