Thirty-seven years after Peter Tosh’s murder

By 7.30pm tonight, it will be exactly the 37^th posthumous anniversary of the killing of Jamaican reggae music lord, Winston Hubert MclnTosh, popularly known as Peter Tosh. Born October 11, 1944, if he were alive, Peter would be 80 years old next month. Thirty seven years ago, reggae music and indeed the world, lost Tosh, the iconic maestro, poet, philosopher and a staunch defender of African rights. Three gunmen, led by Dennis “Leppo” Lobban, one of Tosh’s ‘boys’ who he sustained as part of the communal Rastafarian injunction of brotherly co-existence, had stormed his house at Barbican Road residence, St Andrew, Jamaica. Within a twinkle of an eye, the gunmen had put a full stop to the 42 years of existence of a man who, with two others, Robert Nesta Marley and Neville O’Riley (Bunny Livingston), pioneered what is today a genre of music called reggae. The three had ensured reggae’s mutation from the traditional Jamaican music called ska.

Tosh had, on the morning of his death, just returned to Jamaica from a US business trip and was relaxing by watching a TV satellite show at home. He was with his common law live-in-lover, Marlene Brown when the gunmen struck. The Jamaican court which tried Leppo was to later rule that the attackers were on an armed robbery expedition. Two others were killed in that encounter, namely famous Rastafarian broadcaster and disc jockey with the defunct Jamaican Broadcasting Service (JBS), Jeff Dixon, also known as Free I, and one other guest to the house named Wilton Brown. Free I’s wife, co-guests Michael Robinson and Santa Davis survived but Marlene, Tosh’s wife, had a bullet lodged in her skull.

At first, talks were rife that Marley’s wife, Rita, who controlled his estate, had a hand in Tosh’s murder. The original Wailing Wailers friends of Marley had made legal claim to his multi-million dollar Tuff Gong studio on Hope Street in Kingston. The suspicion about Rita was exacerbated by interviews granted by the then lone survivor of the triumvirate, Bunny, who accused Rita of being a “Jezebel,” alleging also that Tosh was actually sleeping with her while she was married to Bob.

According to Marlene, Leppo had, with a pistol held menacingly in his hands, ordered Tosh and others in the living room “to belly it!” (lie on their bellies) and told Peter specifically, “you’re gonna be dead tonite so you better say nothing!” He asked Peter for US dollars and when he told him he didn’t have any, Leppo again told him he would behead him. At that point, recounted one of Tosh‘s ‘brethren,’ Tosh became uncoordinated and waffled, “I… I could… could make arrangement… for for it a-a-n-other t-t-i-i-m-e.” For what looked like an eternity, it seemed Tosh and his accomplice who stormed the house had agreed with Tosh’s request. All of a sudden, Leppo and his gang opened fire on Tosh. Others were also shot. According to the survivors, the gang emptied its bullets on their victims. Tosh received two bullets on his head. He died that night at a local hospital and was buried on September 26, 1987.

The story of Leppo’s strike was shrouded in mystery. He was one of Tosh’s “brethren” who he fed and who knew the geography of the house. According to another of Tosh’s brethren who was on ground on the day Leppo stormed Tosh’s Barbican Road residence, he owned up that he was the one who opened the house door for Leppo because the Tosh eventual killer was a regular visitor to the house. According to him, Leppo had even come to collect handout from Tosh two weeks before then. Leppo not only visited Tosh’s Barbican Road residence regularly but had become familiar with the trained dogs which provided security therein. So it was not difficult for the gang to disarm the dogs on the day of its strike.

While he held the gun, turning his anger on Marlene, Leppo had angrily accused Tosh, in the Jamaican patois, of “giving his woman authority over we,” stating that Marlene was responsible for Tosh’s inability “to maintain we.” He also ordered the two other assailants to immediately disarm Tosh, warning them that the reggae maestro was “a black belt.” He later shot Tosh himself on the forehead. The talk in Jamaica at the time was that Leppo, who had recently been released from prison, had earlier bitten the bullet for Tosh in a criminal case by going to prison in Tosh’s stead. Leppo, it was said, could thus not stomach why Tosh shouldn’t take good care of him.

A few days after, Jamaican Police Commissioner, Herman Ricketts, told the world that Leppo had surrendered, as well as two other men linked to the murder. He also said that the police had interrogated them though the two men were not publicly named. During the trial, which was held in closed circuit, due to the involvement of firearms evidence, Lobban pleaded his innocence and told the court that he had been involved in a drinking binge with friends before he stormed Tosh’s Barbican Road residence. The jury of eight women and four men however found Leppo guilty and sentenced him to death by hanging, while another accused was acquitted as the jury claimed there was insufficient link to the death to warrant a conviction. In 1995, eight years after he pulled the trigger that killed Tosh, this sentence was commuted to life imprisonment. The identities of two other identified gunmen in the trial were never disclosed.

Tosh faced challenges in the early part of his musical career. In 1973, he was involved in a car accident while driving home with his girlfriend named Evonne. As he drove, he was hit by an oncoming car which was driving on the wrong side of the highway. Evonne was killed in the crash while Tosh’s skull was severely fractured.

For years, many people did not identify the raw talent and artistic bravura combined in the works of the 6.4 feet dreadlocked singer. This was due to his perceived arrogance and self assertiveness. For instance, immediately Bob died, Tosh had shocked the world in an interview where he claimed Bob peaked in his musical career while he (Peter) was decorating the stage. The truth is, Tosh was too assertive, too hot to handle and never hid his disdain for what he called “Babylonian” lifestyle of hedonism. Tosh believed in marrying words with action. Towards the latter part of his life, he cut a queer image of a revolutionary ready to carry arms. With his imposing height as he adorned a black beret, with a guitar that had the shape of an M16 assault rifle, Tosh didn’t mince words in projecting the narrative that he was a musical militant. He told those who underrated him that he was “like you are steppin’ razor” and asked, “don’t you watch my size” as “I am dangerous!” In comparison to others, Tosh said “I’m the Toughest,” an apparent reference to the trained karate belt holder that he was. He was once asked by an interviewer why he never smiled and he said that since he sang revolutionary song which was not love song, nor a tea party, he saw no reason to smile.

The M16 rifle-looking guitar Tosh paraded was a gift to him in 1983. While he was at a stop in Los Angeles during his Mama Africa tour, Bruno Coon, an LA local musician, had visited him in his hotel room and offered him a gift. It turned out to be a custom-built guitar that was creatively shaped in the form of an M16 rifle. Tosh was gladdened by the gift but on his flights while touring Europe, he lost the guitar in transit. He subsequently retrieved the guitar when his publicists put out an article in the famous Der Spiegel magazine announcing its loss. Upon its retrieval, on one of his performances, Tosh went on stage to perform with the guitar clutched in his hand and a ganja billowing smoke stuck in his mouth. However, in 2006, 19 years after his death, the promoters of the Flashpoint Film Festival announced to the world that Tosh’s common law wife, Marlene, was set to auction the guitar on eBay. This prompted strong resistance from Tosh’s children, Andrew and Jawara who promptly stopped the sale. The children claimed that, rather than Marlene, they had greater claims to the guitar.

The militant disposition and themes of repelling those who mocked the Rastafari religion were dominantly addressed by Tosh in the track, Recruiting Soldiers. Therein, he sang that he was recruiting soldiers “for Jah army” because “Jah time is now” and “Satan’s forces all rise up to fight… Jah and the saints… fighting against Jah children… slaughter(ing) them like slaves… and say(ing) Jah is dead, But they didn’t show me his grave.”

Tosh was a strict Rastafarian who obeyed its injunctions religiously. He never mixed up with menstruating women, observing its strict dietary prescriptions and believed in doing good to his fellow man. In the early 90s when he visited Nigeria and stayed at late Sonny Okosun’s country home at Irrua, defunct Bendel State, Tosh was always dashing down to Lagos to purchase his Rasta food at defunct Leventis shop and claimed that the Nigerian hemp was more powerful than his native Jamaica’s. That Nigerian visit produced Mama Africa album and track where he lauded Africa that he was visiting for the very first time. It was also a lost opportunity for Tosh to meet Fela Anikulapo Kuti. He had reportedly gone to Fela’s Shrine to pay him a visit but was told that Abami Eda was observing his siesta. “Tell him it’s Peter Tosh!” he had told the person he met. Apparently not knowing who Tosh was, the man gave the message little push and Tosh left.

Tosh was a great campaigner against apartheid and was unrepentantly African in his advocacy. In African, another very rebellious song, he sang, “Don’t care where you come from, as long as you’re a black man, you’re an African.”  To show how he abhorred the apartheid system, Tosh rejected offers to play in South Africa but accepted same offer to sing in neighbouring Swaziland. In appreciation of this, in April last year, Tosh was posthumously bestowed with a national honour  of the Order of the Companion of Oliver Reginald Tambo by the South African government “for his contribution to the fight against the apartheid regime.” The award was received by Tosh’s youngest daughter, Niambe, at a grand ceremony in Pretoria presided over by South African President Cyril Ramaphosa. According to the Jamaican Observer newspaper, the award was South Africa’s equivalent to Jamaica’s Order of Merit.

Tosh also had an anti-Semitic disposition and was a staunch supporter of the call for a Palestinian homeland. If he was alive today, he would have sung to denounce Prime Minister Netanyahu Israel’s destruction of Palestine. Way back in 1979, Tosh started turning down offers to perform in Israel. At the later part of his life, Tosh walked up the stage with his usual insignia of a ganja (marijuana) spliff clutched in his left fingers and adorning Palestinian dress.

He was highly spiritual. Apart from pursuing a path of goodness to his fellow man, Tosh’s lyrics are laced with biblical quotations. Of the three original Wailers, though he didn’t have much education, he was the most cerebral. He was a poet and in his songs, you could see not only lyricism but abidance with rhyming schemes. He could chant endlessly, quoting biblical verses with baffling mastery. The Mystic Man was perhaps the avenue Tosh used to showcase his spirituality the most. In the track, he proclaimed his mysticism in that he doesn’t “drink no champagne…I don’t sniff dem cocaine (as it) choke(s) brain… I don’t take morphine (dangerous)…I don’t take no heroin… I man don’t eat up your fried chicken…I man don’t eat up them frankfurters…I man don’t eat down the hamburger…I man don’t drink pink, blue, yellow, green soda” and the reason, he said, was because he was “a man of the past, living in the present and walking in the future.”

Like a devoted Rastaman that he was, Tosh never joked with meditations and reading of the scriptures. In Blessed be the man, he quoted copiously from the bible, calling Jah, “Kings of kings, lords of lords Conquering lion of the tribe of Judah, Elect of God, mighty God, Ever living God, earth’s rightful ruler.” In the same vinyl, he lauded as blessed the man “that walk’eth not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor stand’eth in the ways of sinners, nor sitt’eth in the seat of the scornful, for I delight is in the law of the lord God, Selassie I, In his laws do I meditate day and night, therefore I must be like a tree planted by the rivers of water and bring’eth forth fruit in due season I locks also shall not wither and whatsoever I do’eth shall prosper.”

Born in Westmoreland, Jamaica, Tosh’s parents, too young to raise him, gave him up to his aunt in Grange Hill. He manifested precocious talent of singing at childhood and in the early 1960s, Tosh migrated from the country to the slum of Kingston called Trench Town where he hawked sugarcane juice in a cart. He spiced it up with twanging at a guitar he stole from his mother’s church. His mastery of the twanging of the stolen guitar caught the attention of the duo of Robert and Bunny. With the help of music teacher, Joe Higgs, the boys honed their musical skills and decided, in 1962, to form a band which they named The Wailers. Tosh also wrote many of the Wailers’ hit songs, some of them being Get Up, Stand Up; 400 Years and No Sympathy. Indeed, Peter taught the duo of Bob and Bunny how to play the guitar and when they all went their ways in 1974, partly due to Island Records’ Chris Blackwell’s preference for mulatto Bob ahead of others, Peter had lamented that he “taught him how to play guitar and now they say he’s king of reggae.” In interviews, he called Chris many derogatory names, including inflecting his name of Blackwell to “Whiteworst.”

In their a-little-more-than-a-decade of being together musically, The Wailers became a huge commercial success. The New York Times referred to them as “the most popular and admired of all reggae groups” and the band sold more than 250 million albums worldwide.

Upon their separation in 1973, each went solo. Tosh’s first major hit thereafter was an atavistic album he called Legalize It released in 1976 with CBS Records. In it, Tosh uncompromisingly sang the praises of the banned narcotic called Indian hemp, lauding its health benefits. The album sleeve of the vinyl had him smoking the marijuana chalice pipe in a countryside hemp plantation. Today, that atavistic album has celebrated its 48^th anniversary. Immediately it was released, it immediately became the anthem of reggae lovers all over the world. Tosh’s advocacy in the album has remained unquestionably relevant throughout the world today. Many countries of the world have heeded Tosh’s plea in the track to “legalize it” and have taken steps to decriminalize and even legalize the herb. Countries that have done this are Canada, Colombia, Czech Republic, the Netherlands, Uruguay, Romania, France, and Portugal, while almost half of the states in the U.S. have decriminalized and/or legalized marijuana. A few years ago, Tosh’s home island of Jamaica where he was beaten by “downpressor” policemen to the point of cracking his skull for smoking marijuana, became the first Caribbean nation to decriminalize what it called “small amounts of ganja.” By this, Jamaica heeded Tosh’s almost five decades advocacy to “free up the weed.” In another song he titled Bush Doctor, Tosh prayed for a Jamaica where ‘the herb’ “can build up your failing economy” and a day that would come when “there’ll be no more illegal humiliation and no more police interrogation.”

In 1974, Tosh released Equal Rights. In the album, he deplored racism against blacks, sounding uncompromising about his liberation philosophy. He was extremely controversial and did not care whose ox was gored. This probably dictated his highly burnished speech at the 1978 One Love Concert which had him, Bob and other Jamaican musicians on stage. Prime Minister Michael Manley and Edward Seaga, Leader of the Opposition, two politicians on whose behalf politicians inflicted one of the hottest political battles ever witnessed on Jamaica, tearing apart the tiny island with horrendous political fissures, were also there. There, Tosh had told the 40-000-strong audience that he was not a man of peace as “peace” was “the diploma you get in the cemetery” because on the tombstone, it is written, “Rest in Peace!” To Manley and Seaga, he thundered in his bassy voice, apparently encrusted by heavy ganja he smoked anywhere, unabashedly: “Hungry people are angry people.” His memorable words landed with a thud because earlier at the concert, he had ordered camera journalists whom he labelled “lickle pirates from America… wid dem camera and dem TV business” to cease filming. Unlike him, his erstwhile friend and later sworn enemy, Bob stole the show. Bob had asked Manley and Seaga out on the stage, ordering them to clasp their hands in “one love” and squeezed a promise from the politicians to retrieve Jamaica from the political war zone image they had inflicted on it.

Barely five months after the Peace Concert, Tosh was arrested by the police. He was mercilessly beaten and in the process, his skull was cracked. He only stayed alive by feigning that he had been murdered. This probably explains the recurrence of “brutality of Babylon” (the police) in his songs. In his Na go a jail, Tosh banalized the criminalization of hemp smoking and made a mockery of the system which relentlessly hounded the weed smoker. “This here smoke that you see me with sir, I just got it from an officer; And this here little bit of green Sensimilla, I just got it from an Inspector, He’s my friend… I hear one leader say, If it wasn’t for the little Sensi, Him no know what happen to the economy; I see another leader, Go in a Half Way Tree, And he set them ganja prisoners free…” he sang, stating that even the priest smoked marijuana.

In Arise black man, Tosh conjured the Socratic credo of “Man, know thyself.” It was one of the strongest messages from any musician, aside Marley’s adaptation of Emperor Haile Selassie’s speech at the OAU in 1978 into a song he entitled War. Bob’s song too had attempted to rouse blacks from their mental slavery and dependency on the west. In Arise black man, as usual, Tosh spelled the need for the black race to unite and fight for equal rights. Deploying violent imageries, Tosh predicted that the end of mental slavery was near and attacked those who didn’t see this, stating that “heaven becomes your grave.”

Tosh was what could be regarded as a linguistic gymnast and a poet. In his songs, you would encounter raw poetry, with alliterations and virtually all the figures of speech. The word “oppressor” Tosh called “downpressor,” imputing that those who committed such a heinous crime of oppression against blacks should not be dignified with any uplifting. The manager, to him, was the ‘damager’; the judge, a ‘grudge’, the system was ‘shit-stem’ and the Prime Minister, the ‘Crime Minister’ who ‘shits’ (sits) in the ‘House of Represent-a-t’iefs’.” Christopher Columbus, the Italian explorer and navigator from the Republic of Genoa, known for trading in slaves, was Christopher ‘Combulus’ and Alexander the Great was, “Alexander So Called The Great.” In one of his vinyl which he entitled Here comes the judge, just like in Downpressor man, Tosh demonstrated how, on the last day, in the presence of “The Most High Jah,” oppressors of blacks on earth would face the wrath of Jah Rastafari. The will run to the rocks, he sang, “but the rocks will be melting.”

In Get up, stand up, a song written by Tosh but which the trio of erstwhile Wailers sang individually, they made mockery of Christian and Islamic religions, in their transference of succour for man to an unseen creator. The song asked man to seek redemption here on earth and proclaimed that man was tired of the ism and schism of “dying and going to heaven in Jesus name” because “the mighty God is a living man,” a reference to Selassie, worshipped by Rastas as God. Tosh’s own version of the song, which though wasn’t as high-tempoed and popular as Bob’s, is however unique for its slow tempo. Same theme was also in Coming in Hot where Tosh demonstrated the fieriness of his song. Like the gun guitar image of a tough militant that he created, the lyrics of this song compared the ferociousness of the Tosh brand to a gunshot or explosives.

But at some point, it would appear that Tosh himself was getting wary of the feeble impact of his preachments and the repeated attacks and assaults without let that he got from Jamaican authority. In Jah seh so, he launched into existential rhetorical questions by asking if a Rastaman “must bear this cross alone and all the heathens go free? Must Rasta live in misery and heathens in luxury? Must righteous live in pain and always put to shame? Must they be found guilty and always get the blame?” He however consoled himself that Jah seh no.

Tosh wasn’t all militancy, stern face and liberation struggles. He also talked about love and social reality. In Shame and Scandal, he mirrored the marital crossroads that infidelity brings to the home.  Asking repeatedly, “who is real?” he told the story that he said happened in Trinidad  where a boy who was grown “wanted to merry (marry) and (have) a wife of his own” and when he found a young girl, took her to his father who said “son, I have to say no, that girl is your sister but your mama don’t know” and how he thereafter found “the best cook in the island” and took her to his father who again said to him, “You can’t merry that girl…That girl is your sister but your mama don’t know” and when he cried to his mother, “his mama she laughs, she said go man, go, your daddy ain’t your daddy but your daddy don’t know.” In Maga dog, Tosh deployed the well-known Jamaica patois, to wit, ‘Sorry fi mawgah dawg, mawgah dawg tun ‘roun bite yuh” and sang about milk-hearted people who allowed an enemy in the guise of a friend to hit them twice. He even voiced in the vinyl the bark of a dog and the man who owned the house saying “dog no bite, man.”

Tosh’s funeral, unlike that of his archrival, Bob, was a fiasco. Two men turned up claiming they were his father and Peter’s mother had to disown them. The funeral service held at a Jamaican Ethiopian orthodox church was interrupted by youth protesters and a man who claimed to be a necromancer. The man, who claimed he held conversations with the dead, stood by Peter’s coffin to conjure his soul out, hectoring on the body, “Arise and open the casket!” It was to no avail. He was survived by ten children, among whom were, Andrew, born 1967; Jawara, given birth to by a mother named Melody Cunningham; Aldrina and the youngest being Niambe

It was a fitting epithet to his grave that in 1987, months before he was gruesomely murdered, Tosh released an album which reflected his views on world peace which he called, No Nuclear War. The song later won him a posthumous Grammy award. He also started learning unicycles and became a perfect rider, with an ability to ride forwards and backwards and also hop. He most times regaled his audiences with riding his unicycle onto the stage.

Six years after his death, Canadian filmmaker, Nicholas Campbell, made a bioscope of his life which he entitled Stepping Razor:Red X. It was a documentary film which chronicled his life, music and circumstances leading to his untimely and gruesome murder. In Negril, a monument was raised for Tosh and which the family maintains. The monument is a Mecca of sorts to all Tosh’s music lovers where his birthday is celebrated yearly. Twenty five years after his passage, Jamaica awarded him its fourth highest honour, the Order of Merit while in Kingston, a square on Trafalgar Road got renamed  the Peter Tosh Square. It is also where a museum in his name was configured and opened to the public, with priceless Tosh artifacts, especially his beloved M16 guitar, on parade.

In death, Peter Tosh remains a great lover of the black race and a musician whose advocacies are still penetratingly resonant, 37 years after his passage.

Adedayo is author of the book, Ayinla Omowura: Life and Times of An Apala Legend (2022)