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RECOGNITION: Peter Tosh

REGGAE STAR Peter Tosh is honoured in a new biography, chronicling the life of the famed Jamaican musician.

The guitarist, who shot to fame alongside Bob Marley and Bunny Wailer in the celebrated reggae band The Wailers, is the subject of the new biography The Life of Peter Tosh: Steppin’ Razor.

Penned by respected British journalist John Masouri, the book seeks to shine a light on the musician, who was long shunned by the Jamaican establishment due to his militant stance against the country’s poverty and violence.

Overshadowed by Marley, whose pop star status made him more palatable to mainstream international audiences, Tosh, who was murdered in 1987, now gets his recognition in the book, which seeks to give the Legalize It hitmaker “rock star” status.

“I wanted to write the book as an adventure story, and make it eminently readable to people who aren’t necessarily reggae fans or immersed in that culture,” says Masouri, who has close to three decades of experience writing about reggae music.

“The idea was to present Peter’s life story in such a way that it could be afforded parity with that of any rock star,” continues Masouri, who enjoyed success with his first book Wailing Blues: The Story Of Bob Marley’s Wailers (2008).

“That’s because in nearly 30 years of writing about reggae music, I’ve consistently come up against this inherent bias that reggae is somehow inferior to other genres, and I wanted to try and change that somehow.”

Read the full interview with John Masouri, coming soon in The Voice. The Life of Peter Tosh: Steppin’ Razor is available now from Amazon.