Roots, Routes and Revolutions: Scribe on a Vibe brings together the best writing from Vivien Goldman's career as a trailblazing music writer at Sounds, NME, Melody Maker and other music publications over her four decades on the frontlines of radical culture. From the seventies squats of Brixton and Notting Hill hanging out with The Slits, Dennis Bovell and John Lydon, to downtown New York, the Lagos of Fela Kuti and Kingston, Jamaica in the court of Bob Marley and Lee 'Scratch' Perry, the pieces in this collection document the career of a writer who was always prepared to embrace the sounds emerging from the streets and the underground, whether that be punk, reggae, funk or Afrobeat. Ahead or her time in so many ways as a radical feminist thinker about music and its impact on the culture, Vivien Goldman's legacy is one of listener turned evangelist; a writer who has always been hip to the beat whose influence in music writing is evergreen and ever present.

Follow the Sacred Journey to Create One of the Lasting Musical Masterpieces of Our Time

Bob Marley is one of our most important and influential artists. Recorded in London after an assassination attempt on his life sent Marley into exile from Jamaica, "Exodus" is the most lasting testament to his social conscience. Named by "Time "magazine as "Album of the Century," Exodus is reggae superstar Bob Marley's masterpiece of spiritual exploration.
Vivien Goldman was the first journalist to introduce mass white audiences to the Rasta sounds of Bob Marley. Throughout the late 1970s, Goldman was a fly on the wall as she watched reggae grow and evolve, and charted the careers of many of its superstars, especially Bob Marley. So close was Vivien to Bob and the Wailers that she was a guest at his Kingston home just days before gunmen came in a rush to kill "The Skip." Now, in "The Book of Exodus," Goldman chronicles the making of this album, from its conception in Jamaica to the raucous but intense all-night studio sessions in London.
But "The Book of Exodus" is so much more than a making-of-a-record story. This remarkable book takes us through the history of Jamaican music, Marley's own personal journey from the Trench Town ghetto to his status as global superstar, as well as Marley's deep spiritual practice of Rastafari and the roots of this religion. Goldman also traces the biblical themes of the Exodus story, and its practical relevance to us today, through various other art forms, leading up to and culminating with Exodus.
Never before has there been such an intimate, first-hand portrait of Marley's spirituality, his political involvement, and his life in exile in London, leading up to histriumphant return to the stage in Jamaica at the Peace Concert of 1978.
Here is an unforgettable portrait of Bob Marley and an acutely perceptive appreciation of his musical and spiritual legacy.

As an industry insider and pioneering post-punk musician, Vivien Goldman's perspective on music journalism is unusually well-rounded. In Revenge of the She-Punks, she probes four themes-identity, money, love, and protest-to explore what makes punk such a liberating art form for women. With her visceral style, Goldman blends interviews, history, and her personal experience as one of Britain's first female music writers in a book that reads like a vivid documentary of a genre defined by dismantling boundaries. A discussion of the Patti Smith song "Free Money," for example, opens with Goldman on a shopping spree with Smith. Tamar-Kali, whose name pays homage to a Hindu goddess, describes the influence of her Gullah ancestors on her music, while the late Poly Styrene's daughter reflects on why her Somali-Scots-Irish mother wrote the 1978 punk anthem "Identity," with the refrain "Identity is the crisis you can't see." Other strands feature artists from farther afield (including in Colombia and Indonesia) and genre-busting revolutionaries such as Grace Jones, who wasn't exclusively punk but clearly influenced the movement while absorbing its liberating audacity. From punk's Euro origins to its international reach, this is an exhilarating world tour.