Jah Live
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"Jah Live" is bonus track on Bob Marley's 1976 album Rastaman Vibration. The song was released following the death of Haile Selassie whom Rastafarians believe was the third incarnation of their God, pronounced Jah. The song was written as a message to the world that Haile Selassie had not died as detractors of the Rastafarian religion claimed. When the song was released, Selassie was assumed dead but his body would not be recovered until the early 1990s. Rastafarians believed there was no body since Selassie was immortal. Marley was prescient in response to the news that no body had not been found saying, "Yuh cyant kill God".
Though originally recorded for Rastaman Vibration, the song also appears on the 2001 box set Songs of Freedom and the 2005 retrospective compilation album Gold.
In the song, Marley directly confronts those who doubt Rastafarianism because of the apparent death of Selassie:
- Fools sayin' in their heart
- Rasta your God is dead
- But I and I know Jah! Jah!
- Dreaded it shall be dreaded and dread...
- Let Jah a-rise!
- Now that the enemies are scattered
