Sury's Lang and Lit Class

May 30th 1978 On December 3 rd , 1976, Bob Marley was shot two days prior the “Smile Jamaica” concert, allegedly motivated by political views. Despite this mishap, Bob still performed at the concert and told the crowd “ The people who are trying to make this world worse aren’t taking a day off”. “How can I”? Last month, Bob performed at the “One Love Peace Concert” where he managed to unify the two leaders of both factions to embrace on stage.   Bob’s music tends to stem from political tensions, social injustice and black roots however he tries to advocate change in a more subtle and relaxed way rather than forcing change through anger and frustration. Suryha Maniraj (SM): Why did you still perform at the “Smile Jamaica” concert despite rumors of the assassination attempt supposedly being politically motivated? Bob Marley (BM): I wanted to calm the tension between powers and like I said to the crowd at Smile Jamaica, people who are trying to make this world worse aren...

“My block” is a song produced by Tupac Shakur in which he expresses the various factors that are present in the lives of African – Americans living in the “block”. He discusses his past experiences and the alarming struggles of living in an African-American community most predominantly crime, racism and substance abuse. The line “the only time they notice a n*gga is when he’s clutching on a four-five” exhibits the prejudice against African Americans since they are not recognized by the public unless they commit an act of violence or crime.  Substance abuse is another reoccurring factor which Tupac communicates and this can be demonstrated through the line “fearing jail but crack sales got me living…. staying trapped forever in this drug life” and “hanging out picking a game, sipping cheap liquor”. It is evident that through this song Tupac is bringing awareness to the hardships that African-Americans have to bear and why it is challenging for African -Americans to leave their “bl...

Rewinding back to when I first migrated to Australia in 2009, I was fresh from Singapore. I was born in Malaysia to Malaysian born parents and lived there for five years, and then lived in Singapore for another three years, so you can expect my accent to be very different to an Australian accent. I had the typical Malaysian – Singaporean accent with slang words just randomly chucked into sentences like “lah”, the mispronunciation of words such as “want” for “one” and “or not” for “anot” and the shortening of words like “gostand” instead of “go stand”. My family and I moved to Australia with the excitement of living in a western country and in hopes of leading a better lifestyle. At the airport upon our arrival, I exchanged looks with my brother who was also in awe in the way that people were speaking and in the way they sounded.   Starting school was a rush of excitement and fear. I went to a small local private school called St. Bernadette’s. There were people with differ...