-Intervju med Elliot Leib-

Elliot Leib er ansvarlig for CDen "Reggae Free Mumia", der 16 artister og band gir sitt bidrag, til støtte for Mumia Abu Jamal. For øvrig driver han butikken Trade Roots Reggae.

Mumia kneblet av makta.

Mumia Abu Jamal kneblet, MP3,1:06min, 455 kb.

Elliot: We have to remember that Mumia himself is a journalist, and Mumia was the most outspoken critic of the racist policies of the Philadelphia police force. And this earned him great hatred amongst what we would call the power structure in Philadelphia. So it`s not as if the events in August of `81 that led to Mumia`s arrest and incarceration happened in a vacuum. It was a politically charged situation. So the attempt to finally basically eliminate Mumia from public life by putting him behind bars, this is part of the orchestrated attempt to destabilize the Black Power Movement in the United States that began with the attacks against the Black Panthers in the 1960s, and of course your listeners are aware that Mumia was a Black Panther in Philadelphia from the age of 16, and was the minister of communication, and his earliest journalistic activities were as a member of the Black Panther Party.

Hvordan ideen til "Reggae Free Mumia" oppsto.

Ideen bak "Reggae Free Mumia", MP3, 50 sek, 348 kb.

Ranja: Whose idea was it to make this CD?

Elliot: Well, I had been an activist in the movement to stop the execution of Mumia Abu Jamal for maybe a year. And one of the great things that we were able to do here in California where I live, was to have a letter written by Mumia read at the Bob Marley Day shows, which we have every February in San Francisco, in Los Angeles and San Diego, my hometown. And having made contact with Mumia on this occasion, I felt it important that those of us within the reggae community join together to do something more, to both educate and agitate for his release. And that`s how the idea for this CD first arose.

Bandene på "Reggae Free Mumia".

Bandene på "Reggae Free Mumia", MP3, 1:46 min, 732 kb.

Ranja: Was it easy to find interested bands? 

Elliot: Well, it was a long process because the actual CD did not come out until two years after we first began working on it, and the most lengthy process was actually collecting the songs from the various contributors, and I worked on several different fronts to accomplish this. One important one was over the internet, and over the internet we got some of the more interesting submissions for this CD, in particular a song from the group based in Canada called the Fire This Time who contacted us. I also travelled to Jamaica on several occasions to try and interest some of the artists and musicians to contribute, so each song has it`s own little story.

Ranja:  Listening closely to the songs it seems like most of them were written especially for this CD, is that right?

Elliot: Well, not quite, some of the songs were especially written for this CD, including the one we heard from the Revelations, the song from Big Mountain is a song that I wrote togeher with their lead singer Quino. "Set Him Free" by Ras Shiloh, I wrote that  with Ras Shiloh and it was recorded here in San Diego. The band THC (The Heartical Crew) wrote their own song "Free Mumia" for Mumia. And the other songs are basically revolutionary liberation songs which apply to Mumias case and what he represents. So if it`s not particularly about Mumias case, the message is certainly pertain.