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BY LUIS BUENAFLOR
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INSERT DATE HERE!
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“Get up, stand up! (Get up, stand up!)
Don’t give up the fight! (Life is your right!)
Get up, stand up! (So we can’t give up the fight!)
Stand up for your rights!
Get up, stand up! (Keep on struggling on!)
Don’t give up the fight!
We sick an’ tired of-a your ism-skism game
Dyin’ ‘n’ goin’ to heaven in-a Jesus’ name, Lord
We know when we understand
Almighty God is a living man
You can fool some people sometimes
But you can’t fool all the people all the time
So now we see the light (What you gonna do?)
We gonna stand up for our rights! “
– BOB MARLEY & PETER TOSH
PERHAPS there’s never a more appropriate time for this song than now and what better place for this song than “I Am Iloilo City.”
This song is really perfect as the natives are standing up to fight for their emancipation after almost a century of bondage to Panay Electric Company or PECO.
The song “Get Up, Stand Up” is the people’s cry in the struggle against PECO’s bid for the renewal of their franchise as electric service provider of “I Am Iloilo City” for another 25 years.
Yes, this is the battle hymn of oppressed people struggling for their rights.
From that free online encyclopedia:
“Get Up, Stand Up” is a song written by Bob Marley and Peter Tosh. It originally appeared on The Wailers’ 1973 album Burnin’. It was recorded and played live in numerous versions by The Wailers and Bob Marley and the Wailers, along with solo versions by Peter Tosh and Bunny Wailer.
Marley wrote the song while touring Haiti, deeply moved by its poverty and the lives of Haitians, according to his then-girlfriend Esther Anderson.
In an article on pastemagazine.com:
“How long must I protest the same thing?” asked Bob Marley in 1978 about the song he and Peter Tosh made famous with the Wailers. “I sing ‘Get Up Stand Up’, and up till now, people don’t get up,” he said, according to Bob Marley…In His Own Words. “So must I still sing ‘Get Up Stand Up’? I want people to live big and have enough.”
As the opening statement on the Wailers’ 1973 album Burnin’, “Get Up Stand Up” would become not only a signature song for its writers; it would go on to endure as an international human rights anthem. The song has survived versions as diverse as mellow jazz to ear-splitting metal; it’s a standard by any measure, though the fact that it still needs to be performed at all speaks to the persistence of oppression and human rights violations in all forms throughout the world.
Basically this song is about taking action to avoid oppression. Bob Marley wrote it with another Reggae artist Peter Tosh; the song is strongly influenced by their adverse upbringing in Jamaica, where they had to fight for respect and acceptance for their Rastafarian religion.
The natives of “I Am Iloilo City” have for several decades have been complaining about PECO’s service or the lack of it and for the longest time have been largely ignored by PECO.
Well, that is until they finally stood up to fight for their rights and by standing up fighting for their rights PECO finally, albeit reluctantly, took noticed of them. Of course it helped a lot that the Sangguniang Panlungsod also stood up with the native’s struggle for their rights; hopefully, moi has not spoken too soon.
From songfacts.com:
“This was the last song Marley performed; he sang it from a stool at a show in Pittsburgh on Sept. 23, 1980. Marley’s cancer had spread to his brain and it was surprising he could perform at all, but he did a 20-song set that night, closing with a 6-minute rendition of “Get Up, Stand Up” and collapsing soon after the show. He would die on May 11, 1981.”
Bob Marley died 36 years ago but his legacy remains stronger than ever with his songs that mostly depict his people’s struggle from oppression and right to express themselves lives on.
Who would have thought that his personal anthem against oppression “Get Up, stand Up” would find another people struggling to free themselves from almost a century of bondage from the monopoly of a monolith? ((brotherlouie16@gmail.com/PN)
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