The Essay: Herb

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The Essay: Herb: The Binoculars of Jah

Herb

The Binoculars of Jah

BBC Radio 3 - The Essay, Herb, The Binoculars of Jah

Colin Grant ponders the relationship between musical creativity and cannabis.

Writer Colin Grant explores the relationship between cannabis and culture, and traces its journey from India to Jamaica.

The writer Colin Grant weaves autobiography with history and research to allow us to look at cannabis use and abuse from an original perspective. He explores how tendrils of marijuana smoke drift through literature, music, madness, medicine and mankind’s desire to meet and exchange. 

While the twentieth century was marked by cannabis prohibition, the twenty first century is rediscovering tolerance. Legalisation appears to be snowballing. 

But this tolerance comes just as scientists and psychiatrists are becoming increasingly concerned about the drug's links to psychosis, particularly with the global prevalence of higher-strength strains.

In this final Essay, Colin describes how, in the process of writing a book about one of his musical heroes, Bunny Wailer, he finds himself cursed and fearing his own imminent demise. This Essay interrogates marijuana’s association with culture and creativity and explores the place of the drug in both Hinduism and Rastafari, the spiritual and political movement in Jamaica.

Producer: Kirsty Pope
A Far Shoreline production for BBC Radio 3

Live music and the arts: broadcasts more live music than any other radio network. Classical music is its core. Genres include world and new music, jazz, speech and drama.

Writer Colin Grant's personal take on the cultural history of cannabis.

In a landscape in which almost all discussion about cannabis is polarised, writer Colin Grant seeks to explore a range of more nuanced aspects of the drug.

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