Would Bob Marley be rolling over in his grave or am I being oversensitive?

This morning someone sent me this video of Bob Marley's song "Three Little Birds" being covered by Britain's Got Talent's young 6-year old phenom, Connie Talbot:



Now, I know that it's not fair to rip on a little girl. And I'm not trying to quibble about Talbot's talents (although I am personally not fond of young children's voices doing covers of some of my favorite songs), but when I watched the above video, I had a viscerally NEGATIVE reaction to hearing and more importantly SEEING the image of this blond, white British child covering black Jamaican Bob Marley's song, all the while traipsing about the island and coming to the aid of the poor beleagured black Jamaican children in her video.

It reminded me of the scene from Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye where an adolescent African American girl, Pecola, explains why she hates blue eyed, blond haired baby dolls--why she wanted to gouge out their eyes -- why she HATED these dolls and only later, as she grew older, did she learn to turn that hatred into love, a very twisted form of love born out of being conditioned to SEE the blue-eyed, blond haired doll as being the epitome of beauty and worthy of love and affection.

And so I just have to wonder, do the little black Jamaican girls in the music video feel like they wish THEY could be singing Bob Marley's song and making a video where THEY are the one's covering the song by this man who is from THEIR country, who is like THEM and not like the blond little white girl who is here on Easter vacation but who will go back to her own island nation--the same island nation that had colonized Jamaica, killed off the indigenous people, and enslaved men and women who were the ancestors of the little black girls in the video as well as Bob Marley.

[OK, before everyone jumps all over me, let me say that yes I do recognize that the racial politics of Jamaica are complex and reducing Marley or any of these girls into "black" Jamaicans obscures a history of racial mixing (one borne out of violence in many ways) and ignores the multiracial and multiethnic history of Jamaica--but if you go to the sidebar or search for my past Jamaican posts, you'll get a sense of me writing about this topic already]

Am I over-analyzing? Perhaps. It's what I do. So in an effort to show you that I am open to acknowledging the author's intention, let me direct you to an excerpt of the lyrics for "Three Little Birds" and a wiki answer for what those bird symbolize within the song:


"Don't worry about a thing,
'Cause every little thing gonna be all right.
Singin': "Don't worry about a thing,
'Cause every little thing gonna be all right!"

Rise up this mornin',
Smiled with the risin' sun,
Three little birds
Pitch by my doorstep
Singin' sweet songs
Of melodies pure and true,
Sayin', ("This is my message to you-ou-ou:")

Singin': "Don't worry 'bout a thing,
'Cause every little thing gonna be all right."
Singin': "Don't worry (don't worry) 'bout a thing,
'Cause every little thing gonna be all right!"


So a lot of sites talk about how the 3 little birds are a reference to the holy trinity or another biblical reference about birds and forgiveness and love, or that the 3 little birds are a reference to Marley's 3 backup singers. But according to the booklet in Marley's Songs of Freedom,

"When Bob and his brethren at the Island House would pick the cannabis seeds out, the birds would eat them off the floor"

Which means, when you re-read the lyrics, it's basically about how smoking weed helps you to relax and not worry. Which also puts the above video by little Miss Talbot in an odd context...a six-year old endorsing marijuana use to chill out.

And in case, like me, you needed to get the above video (and voice) out of your head, here's "Three Little Birds" sung by the one and only Bob Marley:

Bob Marley - Three Little Birds
by hushhush112