BOB MARLEY AND THE WAILERS
"Rat Race"
What's behind the classic song
by Eric Doumerc
(December 2023)
Oh what a rat race!
Oh what a rat race!
This is the rat race.
Some a lawful, some a bastard
Some a jacket,
Oh what a rat race, rat race!
Some a gorgon, some a hooligan,
Some a guinea-gog!
On this rat race, yeah!
Rat race.
I'm singing
When the cat's away,
The mice will play,
Political violence fill ya city
Yeah-ah!
Don't involve rasta in your say-say,
Rasta don't work for no C.I.A.
Rat race, rat race, rat race.
When you think it's peace and safety,
A sudden destruction,
Collective security for surety, yeah!
Don't forget your history, know your destiny,
In the abundance of water, the fool is thirsty.
Rat race, rat race, rat race.
Oh, it's a disgrace to see the human race
In a rat race, rat race.
You got the horse race,
You got the dog race,
You got the human race,
But this is a rat race, rat race.
"Rat Race" appeared on the Rastaman Vibration album, which was released in May 1976 on the Island label. The song was instantly popular and remained in the Wailers' repertoire for many years. Its popularity with Jamaican and non-Jamaican audiences all over the world is no doubt due to its reference to both a specifically Jamaican situation and a more universal context of suffering and oppression. In other words, the song's message was sufficiently clear for every Jamaican to pick up all the references in 1976 and vague enough for every listener to interpret it according to the situation he or she was in at the time (Marley's use of proverbs or proverb-like statements like "When the cat's away, the mice will play" and "In the abundance of water, the fool is thirsty" ensured that).
When " Rat Race" was first released in May 1976, the People's National Party was in office with Michael Manley as Prime Minister. The PNP had come to power in 1972 on a socialist platform and had vowed to improve the living and working conditions of Jamaicans (after all, the PNP's slogan was "Better Must Come," inspired by Delroy Wilson's song). Once in office, Manley's government launched a raft of measures like free education and a land reform, but these measures cost money and the 1973 oil crisis dealt a serious blow to the Jamaican economy. As a consequence, in 1974, the government decided to tax the profits made by the American and Canadian companies which were in charge of the extraction of bauxite in Jamaica. This led to a flight of capital and by 1975, the situation had become even more difficult.
Another problem was Jamaica's relationship with its Communist neighbour Cuba. Since 1973, the two countries had launched a series of programmes which had given the impression that Jamaica was becoming a communist state. The USA started applying diplomatic pressure and in 1975, the American Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger, advised Manley to remain neutral in the Angola affair. By 1975, Angola was in the throes of a civil war and two warring factions, the MPLA and UNITA, were having it out on the streets. The MPLA was of course supported by the Eastern bloc and Cuba. When the Manley government recognised the MPLA as the legitimate government in Angola, the American government's suspicions seemed to be confirmed.
The Jamaican Opposition accused the PNP government of being a bunch of Communists, and the Manley government insisted that foreign influence and the Opposition did their best to destabilise the country. All kinds of rumours started flying around, from Marxist guerrillas training in the hills to CIA operatives working in Jamaica to destabilise the country.
Since the late 1960's, the two political parties, the People's National Party and the Jamaica Labour Party, had taken to settle their scores by using goon squads from the ghetto areas, and this militarisation of ghettos reached its climax in 1976 when a State of Emergency the notorious Gun Court was declared by the Manley government.
Marley's song uses the phrase "rat race" in a slightly different sense from the one it is usually used. These words are normally associated with competition in the business world, and more generally with selfishness, acquisitiveness and greed, but in the 1976 Jamaican context, they could also have referred to the escalating political violence due to the factors detailed above. Marley insisted that the whole of Jamaican society, from "gorgan" (Rastafarians whose hairstyle looks like the ancient Gorgon's snakes) to "hooligans" (rude boys or ghetto toughs) was trapped in that race. And of course even "guinea-gogs" ("influential people," according to the Jamaicans.com website) were caught in it. A "guinea-gog" could also refer to a person who is feared, a person who rules an area, like a politician or an area gang leader.
The mention of " lawfuls," "bastards" and "jackets" may point to social divisions as a "jacket" in Jamaican English is "the child of a married woman and a man who is not her husband" (Allsopp's Dictionary of Caribbean English Usage) an illegitimate child, by contrast with a "lawful," a child born in wedlock. Again, the implication seems to have been that the whole of Jamaican society, from uptown to downtown, was unable to get out of the rat race.
The wild rumours flying around at the time are alluded to in the words "say-say" and of course "Rasta don't work for no CIA," which was taken at the time as a sign that Marley was aligned with the PNP. "Political violence fill ya city" is of course a reference to the fighting on the streets of Kingston which had been going on for a number of years by then and which had led to the calling of a State of Emergency in June 1976.
The song is also notable for Marley's wry humour and use of punning which appear in the lines "You got the dog race" which seem to imply that the political situation in Jamaica had turned human beings into animals or rats on a treadmill, chasing an illusion and killing one another in the process.
"Rat Race" belongs to a body of songs that bemoaned the growing militarisation of ghettoes and Jamaica's slow slide into anarchy and which were released in the mid-1970's. These songs include Leroy Smart's " Ballistic Affair," Junior Murvin's "Police and Thieves" and Max Romeo's "War inna Babylon," all released in 1976. But the song which most visibly reflected Marley's influence was Fred Locks' "A True Rastaman "(available on the Black Star Liners LP, Vulcan, 1977) whose opening lines went:
Rasta don't work for no CIA,
Jah sent us here to show the way.
Rasta don't work for no politician,
A true Rastaman is a good and upright man
So he will live for evermore,
Through Jah's mercy, he'll endure."
These lines echo both Marley's "So Jah Seh" and "Rat Race" and voice similar sentiments to the one expressed in "Revolution" ("Never trust a politician, they will try to control you forever"). They testify to Marley's huge influence at the time on other reggae lyricists.
References:
* Allsopp, Richard. Dictionary of Caribbean English Usage. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996.
* Henke, Holman. Between Self-Determination and Dependency- Jamaica's Foreign Relations,1972-81. Kingston: University of the West Indies Press, 2000.
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