Roskinds: Bob Marley Birthday Concert Feb 6 04



This vibration of One Love emanating from this small island of Jamaica through its conscious reggae music is having a profound healing effect on people everywhere. It is a force that must be respected, honored and nurtured as Jamaica's potential to "play her part in advancing the welfare of the whole human race" is immense and much-needed during these vulnerable times.
 
Greetings, Everyone:


As most of you know, last year, my wife, Julia, and I organized thirty The Healing of the Nation Concerts throughout Jamaica. One of the concerts was at University of the West Indies in Kingston on Bob's 58th birthday in 2003. It featured reggae artists Luciano, Abijah, Ernie Smith, Denroy Morgan, Swade, Mackie Conscious and I'ngel Chanta and was broadcast live on the RJR Radio via The Richie B Show, Jamaica's most popular radio program. (The crime indexes declined in the months following our these concerts.)


We are planning a similar concert this year--on Bob's 59th birthday, February 6, 2004. The JCDC, the branch of the Jamaican government responsible for promoting Jamaican culture, will be co-venturing the concert with us. We will invite the speakers and performers and, as we did the last two years, once again we will forward the challenge of Jamaica being the first society to heal itself with individual acts of One Love (unconditional love, agape) and forgiveness.

RJR Radio has committed to air the concert again this year and many of the conscious reggae artist have agreed to appear if they are on the island. This includes Luciano, Abijah, Ernie Smith, Culture, Judy Mowat, LMS, Morgan Heritage, and others. We plan to invite many more in the weeks ahead. Also, several well-known Jamaicans, who have previously endorsed our efforts, will be speaking. This include the Governor General Sir Howard Cooke, Dr. Barry Chevannes from UWI, Rev. Devon Dick of the Boulevard Baptist Church, Rev. Rawle Tyson, Bobby Stephens of the Port Royal Authority and others. The concert will be free and held at Emancipation Park, the beautiful new stage/park in downtown Kingston.

After this concert, during the 12 months leading up to Bob's 60th birthday on February 6, 2005, we are planning a series of other concerts throughout the island to further encourage a national healing. Julia and I are simply the catalyst and organizers. Individual Jamaicans, joining the nationally-recognized healers, will lead the effort. With this message coming forward from well-known people within the culture--from reggae artists, the JCDC, the Governor General and church leaders--the chances of success are greatly increased.

For Julia and I, our message to the Jamaican people is one that we feel will increase the national and personal self-esteem of every Jamaican. It is simply this:

Jamaica has already created four miracles. We are simply asking everyone to create the fifth, which is no harder than the first four.



Miracle #1: Jamaica is the birthplace of a very powerful global message of One Love. It has reached people of all religions, color, nationalities, economic levels, and ages. This message is conscious reggae music.


Miracle #2: This message is almost exclusively Jamaican. Almost every well-known conscious reggae artists is Jamaican. Through their music, millions of people everyday listen to these Jamaican healers--messengers of love--not just for entertainment but for healing, spiritual guidance and encouragement.


Miracle #3: The entire Jamaican society has birthed this message. The music is reflecting the consciousness of the culture. As these conscious artists grew and interacted with thousands of their fellow Jamaicans, the dominant (though not only) message they formed, through their hearts and music, was "One Love." Therefore, the entire Jamaican society can take credit for these miracles, as everyone, not just a handful of reggae artists, have birthed this message.


Miracle #4: It is miraculous that the message is one of love rather than bitterness and frustration. For Jamaica, a brutal slave colony for 350 years and presently the second poorest country in the Western hemisphere, to have brought forward this message is truly astonishing.

Jamaica is the only place on Earth today that people everywhere, through their love of reggae music, look to as a focus of love and healing. Even religious capitals such as Jerusalem, the Vatican and Mecca can no longer make that claim. Jamaica is the headquarter, and more importantly, the "heartquarter," of One Love. And for this every Jamaican can take credit and pride, as well as full responsibility for the importance of this message in today's world.

My wife and I have seen the incredible healing power of this Jamaican message. We have seen 850 Hopi Indian high school students on their remote Arizona reservation erupt in joy when Abijah started singing Bob Marley's songs at a recent concert--songs to which the students knew every word. We have talked with college students at reggae festivals where we speak, who tell us how they are working and saving their money to make a spiritual journey to the island. We have received many letters from prisoners, both black and white, Christian and Rastafarian, in U.S. jails, thanking us for bring this Jamaican healing message to them through our books, Rasta Heart andThe Gathering of the Healers. They have told us that as more and more prisoners read the books and absorb the message, their entire cellblocks have mellowed--an nearly impossible achievement.



The fifth miracle is to now heal the country with love and forgiveness. This will reaffirm “One Love-Jamaica's message to the World,"just as billboards throughout the island affirm. To do this we are asking every Jamaican willing to join with us to heal their own lives by doing one simple thing: to forgive as many people as they can (including themselves), as soon as they can, as much as they can and to encourage others to do likewise. We do not need everyone to join us--not even a majority--just enough to begin to change the vibrations. Then the national healing will continue under its own momentum as more and more people feel the change.

Though we cannot as yet know whether there will be an observable national healing, we can guarantee that everyone joining us will experience a personal healing as love and forgiveness manifests even more profoundly through their lives. And even if Jamaica is not the first country to heal itself through love, it will be the first country to try--and even that is a great honor.


The Creator has given ach of us our own individual path of love and forgiveness--our "beauty path" as the Native Americans call it. When we are in a loving, forgiving state of mind and heart, we are on that path. Anyone can step on their beauty path at any time no matter who they are, how much money they have, what they have done in the past, what has happened to them, or whatever their outer conditions might be.

Our hope is that you will join us and we will succeed in healing Jamaica through individual acts of love and forgiveness. If we are to avoid even greater human suffering, people everywhere must begin to take responsibility to heal their own lives and societies and no longer wait for or rely on their leaders. Today's political leaders will not take as there as they, too, have gone astray and do not know where to lead the people.

Jamaica is uniquely qualified to begin, and hopefully complete, this national healing. Her past successes of creating miracles of love indicates that there is a strong possibility that she can fulfill her destiny.

However, in this hope we are not naive idealists. As Vaclav Havel, playwright and former president of Czechoslovakia once wrote, "Hope, in this deep and powerful sense, is definitely not the same thing as optimism. It is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out.

Robert & Julia Roskind

Posted: Mon - December 8, 2003 at 08:02 PM      

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