Bob Marley was a seminal figure in popular music in the post-Beatles era: not the first person to introduce reggae to the radio but the first reggae superstar – and one of the first superstars to emerge from the Third World.
So “Marley” is a welcome documentary, one that celebrates his spirit, his creativity, his genius and his influence. If it errs on the side of hagiography, well, at least it gives us glimpses of previously unseen (and unheard) Marley performances, and as much interview footage as filmmaker Kevin Macdonald could collect.
Why, then, does “Marley” feel incomplete? Make no mistake: I enjoyed the film and found the interviews intriguing – with everyone from Chris Blackwell (who signed Marley to his record label) to Bunny Wailer (one of Marley’s original bandmates) to his wife Rita, his girlfriend Cindy Breakspeare and a couple of his children.
They tell a story of young Bob who, as a kid, always wanted to make music and began recording at a young age. He also had a highly developed sense of social justice, which sprang from his poverty-stricken youth and his own sense of being an outsider because he was mixed race, the son of a British soldier who never acknowledged him.
Robert Nesta ‘Bob’ Marley was an icon not only in
the music scene but as an inspirational figure and advocate fighting for
human rights, social justice and standing firm for what you believe in.
The singer is probably the most famous singer and songwriter out of Jamaica and in the reggae music genre.
The singer was born February 6, 1945 and died May 11, 1981. In commemoration of his life, Pulse Music presents seven musical related facts about the iconic musician on the 35th anniversary of his death.
1. Marley started his singing with a vocal harmony group with Bunny
Wailer, Peter Tosh, Beverley Kelso and Junior Braithwaite. Joe Higgs,
who was part of the successful vocal act Higgs and Wilson.
2. Joe Higgs taught Marley how to play the guitar. He influenced him to sing for the records.
3. Marley recorded his first four songs at the Federal Studio in Jamaica. These songs were 'Judge Not', 'One Cup of Coffee', 'Do You Still Love Me?' and 'Terror'. However, 'One Cup of Coffee' was released under the pseudonym Bobby Martell.
4. In 1963, Marley formed a band called 'The Teenagers' with Bunny
Wailer, Peter Tosh, Junior Braithwaite, Beverley Kelso and Cherry Smith.
They changed the name to 'The Wailing Rudeboys' and later to 'The
Wailing Wailers'. ALSO READ: 12 interesting facts you should know about the late Rastafarian
5. The band joined hands with record producer Coxsone Dodd. They
produced single track named 'Simmer Down' that was rated as Jamaican
No.1. 'The Wailing Wailors' again changed their name to 'The Wailers'.
playToronto's Mayor declares Bob Marley Day
6 . Marley's songs became an instant hit in the United States within a
few years. In 1972, Marley signed a contract with CBS Records, London,
and went on his first tour with American soul singer Johnny Nash. It was
during this tour that Marley got acquainted with the staff members of
Island Records, one of the largest record producers in the world. His
songs became a worldwide hit.
7. Bob Marley is an inductee in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. His
song 'One Love' has been named the song of the millennium by BBC
For the past 24 years, Courtney Betty has been rewarding outstanding
citizens and organizations that have played key roles in promoting
unity, diversity and equality with Bob Marley Day Awards.
At last Friday’s celebration to mark the late reggae artist’s 70th
birthday, Betty was on the receiving end of a Bob Marley Day Lifetime
Award.
He stepped down this year as the event’s principal organizer because of business commitments.
“Knowing when to pass the baton on is something that I am cognizant
of and that’s the message I want to leave,” said Betty, who has a first
degree from the University of Prince Edward Island and a law degree from
York University’s Osgoode Hall. “Success, for me, is measured when you
pull people up along the way and not by what an individual has achieved.
“I have done many of the things I wanted to do which is great, but
happiness for me is looking around and seeing others who have achieved.
Unfortunately, we as a community have forgotten about the legacy piece
and how do we enhance, empower and enlighten others around us rather
than focussing on ourselves.”
Betty said the Bob Marley Day Awards were launched to build relationships between the Black community and the police.
“I was a crown attorney at the time and I was caught in a divide,” he
said. “Here I was representing the Department of Justice on the one
hand and then we had a lot of issues with the police and our community. I
saw this event as a bridge to link the police and the community.”
When the event started in 1991, Keith Forde and Karl Davis – Staff
Inspectors at the time who are now retired – were the highest-ranking
Black Toronto police officers.
The Toronto Police Service now has two Black deputies – Peter Sloly
and Mark Saunders – and a female Black Inspector, Sonia Thomas.
“The Service has become much more reflective of the community it
serves and relations between the police and the community are not what
they were 24 years ago,” said Betty, a member of the Law Society of
Upper Canada and the Bar of Jamaica.
A leading advocate for the development of a legal framework for
supplier diversity, Betty successfully assisted the Jamaican government
in deregulating the telecommunications sector. He also helped AT&T
negotiate a cellular license in Jamaica.
Betty is the president and chief executive officer of Timeless Herb
Care, a Jamaican medical marijuana company that recently recruited
former Ontario premier, Ernie Eves, to be its chairman.
Other Bob Marley Day Lifetime Award recipients were the Jamaican
Canadian Association, Mayor John Tory, Ontario’s Minister of Tourism,
Culture & Sport Michael Coteau; councillor Michael Thompson and
Sloly, who was the recipient of a Bob Marley Day Award in 2004.
At the time, he was a Staff Inspector.
“Over those 11 years, I have continued trying to improve the Toronto
Police Service to be better at the service part of things, including the
safety, but very particularly the service – serving a diverse city in a
way that’s respectful and a way that captures the spirit of our city’s
theme which is ‘Diversity is our Strength’,” said Jamaican-born Sloly.
“In that time, I have tried to build the fabric of the city by
sitting on boards like Covenant House, the YMCA and Civic Action because
it’s more than just policing. It’s about building social cohesion and
capacity in small neighbourhoods and building resilience in our young
people.”
Bob Marley Day Awards were presented to Dr. Laura Mae Lindo and Dr.
Afua Cooper, who was unable to attend the event and Epilepsy Toronto
director of public education and outreach, Rachael-Lea Rickards.
An award-winning author, poet and historian, Dr. Cooper is the chair
of the James Johnston Endowed Chair in Black Canadian Studies at
Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia. Her interest in slavery, abolition
and women studies led to her doctoral dissertation on anti-slavery
crusader Henry Bibb and the publishing of The Hanging of Angelique: The Untold Story of Canadian Slavery and the Burning of Old Montreal, a national bestseller that was nominated for the 2006 Governor General’s Award.
A singer/songwriter and the creative consultant of Dr. Lindo
Productions, which was established in June 2011, Lindo is Wilfrid
Laurier University’s diversity and equity director. Prior to assuming
the new position last August, she was a senior research associate at
Ryerson University for six months. In that role, she brought together
varied approaches to equity, education, training and mentorship through
her involvement in myriad projects and partnerships with stakeholders
from diverse sectors.
Bob Marley Day Future Leader Awards were presented to 20-year-old
Ryerson University student, Alyssa Sun, who aspires to be a biologist;
Grade 11 student, Akeem Clarke, whose goal is to become a professional
basketball player; Weston Collegiate Grade Nine student, Amanda Singh,
who intends to become a teacher and aspiring paediatrician, Shaquillia
Charles, who attends Father Henry Carr Catholic Secondary School.
Bob Marley and cannabis are almost synonymous — in some places, "Bob
Marley" is the street name for pot. So, it was almost an inevitability
these two would one day be formally united. That day came in November
2014 when Marley's family and private equity firm Privateer Holdings announced the creation of Marley Natural, the world's first international cannabis brand.
Marley Natural is reinventing the cannabis industry from
something informal and clandestine to professional and sleek. The brand
is more than a cannabis distributor. It is developing a wide range of
products derived from the plant — including lip balm, body lotion, hand
cream, serum and edibles, to name a few — along with all the
paraphernalia one could ever need.
The new-age dealer: At its official launch at the end
of the year, Marley Natural will start selling roughly three to five
strains of smokeable cannabis, along with innovative new products
derived from cannabis. They will distribute these to dispensaries in
states where recreational cannabis is legal.
Some of these new products will feature infusions of CBD, THC or
both, the psychoactive compounds that produce a high, while others will
not include psychoactive ingredients. There will be a range of options
from THC-infused cream for an epidermal high, to innocuous hemp seed
oil, which will only leave the consumer feeling moisturized (and not
high).
One of the things that makes Marley Natural different is its
accessories. Not only is the company selling cannabis in different
forms to be consumed, but it's also selling the products people use to
consume them, putting them in the unique position of potentially
controlling both distribution and means of consumption.
"We'll be offering an accessories
collection. Not just things like vaporizers, pipes and storage
containers, but ceremonial and lifestyle accessories, too," Tahira
Rehmatullah, general manager of Marley Natural, told Mic. This is one of the crucial ways the company is building its brand, setting itself apart in the process.
"They'll have a modern and sleek look
very much in line with the DNA of Marley Natural. The attraction will be
in the design itself: We look at them as pieces of art versus just a
pipe, for example. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of these
products out there, which are a little shady," Rehmatullah said. Marley
Natural intends on destigmatizing cannabis in the process. "We want to
make products that you would feel very comfortable having on your
bedside table," Rehmatullah said.
While Marley Natural's accessories and smokeable cannabis
will be rolled out at the time of their official launch, they will
initially be more cautious and restrictive about how they sell their
newer products, specifically the CBD- and THC-infused creams, oils and
edibles. The law regarding the sale of these types of products is more
opaque than that of cannabis in its pure form, Rehmatullah said. For
legal reasons, only accessories and products that won't produce a high
will be sold on their website; the rest will be distributed to be sold
in brick-and-mortar stores.
Ahead of the game: Privateer Holdings were one of the
first firms to really understand the cannabis market, and in
preparation for Marley Natural, the founders started the legal and
business legwork five years ago.
"I think one of our competitive advantages is that Privateer
set up to really understand this market and this space. We met with
lawyers and activists and political campaigners and patients and growers
and really built a network of people to fully understand the
marketplace," Zack Hutson, public relations director at Privateer
Holdings, told Mic.
Cannabis is recreationally legal in Washington, Alaska, Colorado and Washington D.C., with medicinal cannabis legalized
in 20 more states. The laws vary by state, both in how it can be grown
and how it can be sold, making it potentially difficult to ensure a
cannabis company is always operating within the confines of the law.
"It has taken awhile to figure out but I feel like we have a
good sense of how this can work and how we can build a national brand
by working with local growers in different states and in different
countries, but still assuring they meet our quality standards and brand
standards," Hutson said.
Privateer Holdings invested considerable resources into
understanding this legal landscape in order to dominate the market and
make the best decisions possible for the company.
"We really have the benefit of being the movers in the
industry, who really took the time to learn the nuances of all the
markets," Rehmatullah said. "We've traveled the world, understanding how
different governments function, how they're looking at this, what the
forward looking opportunity is, and we continue to do that."
Marley Natural is constantly in dialogue
with their growers, the country's policymakers and lobbyists, allowing
itself to evolve with the laws. But Hutson and Rehmatullah also said
everyone in the industry is confident the end of prohibition is
imminent. Marley Natural also has the unusual advantage of pioneering a
market which everyone knows there's a demand for.
"There's no risk these products won't
resonate with the market place. We believe cannabis is a mainstream
product consumed by mainstream people," Hutson said.
A family affair: Marley's children are playing a
hands-on role in the development of this brand. "The family has been
great to work with and involved in a number of levels. They're thinking
about design and really how to position the brand because they want to
preserve the life and spirit of their father," Rehmatullah said.
The Marley family has met with Privateer employees in
Jamaica on a number of occasions as they develop the company. Jamaican
ministers are also involved in the project, in order to integrate the
country into the company, through ethos and in the actual production of
Marley Natural accessories.
"My dad would be so happy to see people understanding the
healing power of the herb, he's smiling right now at what's really
happening," Marley's daughter, Cedella, told Caribbean Life News after her company was announced.
America must brace itself for a change. What was once the
business of college students furtively showing up at one's doorstep with
a backpack full of pot, is soon to be dominated by a sleek,
international brand to be found in mainstream stores. Whether consumers
choose to get high with THC serum and Perrier or a fancy,
Marley-approved vaporizer, the world of weed is about to be shaken up
like never before.
One love. And many weed-themed products.
A line of marijuana accessories, hemp body
products and what's being marketed as the first global brand of
commercial weed, all bearing the blessing of reggae superstar Bob Marley's estate, went on sale this week.
Backed by Privateer Holdings, a Seattle-based
private equity firm focused on the cannabis indsutry, the Marley Natural
brand is clearly designed to appeal to a wider customer base than
college kids with a Bob Marley "Legend" poster on their dorm room wall.
Body care products like hemp seed lotion and body wash, as well as
accessories like a wood-accented bubbler and black walnut wooden case,
are available for order online.
The company's brand of legal marijuana will be
available starting Saturday in Los Angeles, with plans to bring it to
the rest of California, Colorado, Washington, Nevada and Oregon later
this year. And all the products are cleanly packaged enough to look not
out of place at your local Whole Foods.
"We are fortunate to be living during a
promising time of positive change, especially with regard to cannabis
and how people understand it," Cedella Marley, the singer's daughter,
said in a statement. "My dad would be so happy to see so many people
appreciating the natural, healing power of the herb."
The brand built around Bob Marley has done very
well since the man himself died in 1981 at the age of 36. He ranks
fourth on the Forbes list of top-earning dead celebrities, thanks to
continued high record sales and other products, including beverages and
lifestyle lines. Marley's name netted a total of $21 million in 2015,
according to Forbes.
He'll likely only shoot up that list with the
money that's almost certainly guaranteed by the launch of Marley
Natural. The market for legal weed is growing, and a brand built around a
man known almost everywhere on the planet for his devotion to marijuana
as a vehicle for religious experience — and bolstered by marketing from
the same folks who brought us the Starbucks mermaid — seems like a sure
bet.
National sales of legal marijuana jumped from
$4.6 to $5.4 billion in 2015, according to research from the ArcView
Group, which tracks the cannabis industry, and could climb to $6.7
billion for this year.
They project the market could balloon to as much
as $21.8 billion over the next five years, with adult recreational
users taking over the lion's share of the market from medicinal
marijuana buyers.
Courtesy of Marley Natural / Courtesy of Marley Natural
"The strong growth in demand for legal cannabis
over the past two years is expected to continue in the years ahead,"
ArcView says in the report, which was released Feb 1. "With nearly a
dozen states debating changes to their cannabis laws in the coming year,
2016 will be the tipping point in which a majority of U.S. states
transition from cannabis prohibition to some form of regulated legal
markets."
While Marley is arguably popular culture's most
popular ambassador of marijuana, everyone from Melissa Etheride to Snoop
Dogg to Willie Nelson have made moves to get in on the act, as what was
once a mildly rebellious act becomes ever more mainstream.
"It is extremely important to us and to the
family that Marley Natural operates with integrity and a strong social
conscience," Marley Natural general manager Tahira Rehmatullah said in a
statement. "We source our products in an environmentally and socially
responsible way, as we believe Bob Marley would have wanted."
In his brief life, Bob Marley rose from poverty and obscurity to the status of an international superstar—the first Third World artist to be acclaimed to such a degree. Were it not for his charisma and ambition, reggae music might still be confined to Jamaica’s ghettoes where it originated. Loved by millions for his musical genius, Marley was also a heroic figure to poor and oppressed people everywhere because of his passionate articulation of their plight and his relentless calls for political change. As Jay Cocks wrote in Time,“His music could challenge the conscience, soothe the spirit and stir the soul all at once.”
Robert Nesta Marley was born to Cedella Malcolm when she was barely nineteen years old. The child was the result of her clandestine affair with Norval Marley, the local overseer of crown lands in the rural parish where she lived. Captain Marley, a white man more than twice Cedella’s age, married the girl to make the birth legitimate, but he left the countryside the day after his impromptu wedding in order to accept a post in the city of Kingston. He had virtually no contact with his wife and son for several years, and Bob grew up as the pet of his grandfather Malcolm’s large clan. He was known as a serious child and had a reputation for clairvoyance.
When Bob was about five years old, Cedella received a letter from her estranged husband, who asked that his child be sent to Kingston in order to attend school. Bob’s mother reluctantly agreed and put her young son on the bus to Jamaica’s largest city. Captain Marley met the child, but, for reasons unknown, he took him to the home of an elderly, invalid woman and abandoned him there. Bob was left to fend almost entirely for himself in Kingston’s ghettos, generally considered some of the world’s most dangerous. Months passed before Cedella managed to track down her child and bring him back to his country home. Before long, however, mother and child had returned to Kingston, where Cedella believed she had a greater chance of improving her life. She and Bob were joined by Bob’s closest friend, Bunny Livingston, and Bunny’s father, Thaddeus.
Jamaican society held very few opportunities for blacks at that time. Bob and Bunny grew up in an environment where violent crime was glorified by many young people as one of the few ways of getting ahead. Music was seen as another means of escape. Like most of their contemporaries, the two boys dreamed of becoming recording stars, and they spent their days coming up with songs and practicing them to the accompaniment of makeshift guitars, fashioned from bamboo,
Born Robert Nesta Marley, February 6, 1945, in Nine Miles, Saint Ann, Jamaica; died of cancer, May 11, 1981, in Miami, FL; buried in Nine Miles, Saint Ann, Jamaica; son of Norval Sinclair Marley (a British Army captain) and Cedella Marley Booker (a shopkeeper, and later, a singer; maiden name, Malcolm); married Alpharita Constantia Anderson (known as Rita; a singer), February 10, 1966; children: (with wife) David (Ziggy), Cedella, Stephen, and Stephanie; (other legally recognized children with seven different women) daughters Karen and Makeda Jahnesta, and sons Rowan, Robbie, Kimani, Julian, and Damian, Religion: Rastafarian.
Worked as a welder, Kingston, Jamaica, briefly in 1961; lab assistant at Du Pont, forklift driver in a warehouse, and assembly-line worker at Chrysler, all in Delaware, 1966; owner of a record store, Wailin’ Soul, Kingston, Jamaica, beginning 1966; formed Tuff Gong recording label, 1970; recording artist, 1962-81; founding member, with Peter Tosh and Bunny Wailer, of musical group the Wailers (originally known as the Teenagers, then as the Wailing Rudeboys, then the Wailing Wailers), early 1960s.
Awards: Special citation on behalf of Third World nations from United Nations, 1979; Jamaica’s Order of Merit, 1981; May 11 proclaimed Bob Marley Day in Toronto, Canada.
sardine cans, and electrical wire. By 1963, Marley’s dream had come true—he’d released his first single, “Judge Not.” Soon he and Bunny had teamed with another singer, Peter Macintosh (later known as Peter Tosh), to form a group known as the Wailers. Through talent shows, gigs at small clubs, and recordings, the Wailers became one of the most popular groups in Jamaica.
Their early success was based on popular dance hits in the “ska” music style. As time passed, they added social commentary to their lyrics and were instrumental in transforming the light, quick ska beat into the slower, bass-heavy reggae sound. The three men also came under the influence of Rastafarianism. This complex set of mystical beliefs holds that the now deceased Emperor Haile Selassie I of Ethiopia (whose given name was Ras Tafari) was the living God who would lead blacks out of oppression and into an African homeland. It was once considered the religion of outcasts and lunatics in Jamaica, but in the 1960s it came to represent an alternative to violence for many ghetto dwellers. Rastafarianism lent dignity to their suffering and offered them the hope of eventual relief. Rejecting the standards of the white world that led many blacks to straighten their hair, Rastas let theirs mat up into long, ropy “dreadlocks.” They follow strict dietary rules, abhor alcohol and drugs, but revere “ganja” (marijuana) as a holy herb that brings enlightenment to users. The Wailers soothed ghetto tensions with lyrical messages of peace and love, but at the same time, they warned the ruling class of “imminent dread judgement on the downpressors.”
For all their acclaim in Jamaica, the Wailers saw few profits from their early recording career, as unscrupulous producers repeatedly cheated them out of royalties and even the rights to their own songs. That situation changed in the early 1970s, after Marley sought an alliance with Chris Blackwell, a wealthy white Jamaican whose record company, Island, was the label of many major rock stars. At the time, reggae was still considered unsophisticated slum music that could never be appreciated by non-Jamaican audiences. Blackwell had a deep interest in the music, however, and because he felt that the Wailers were the one group capable of popularizing reggae internationally, he offered them a contract. He handled the marketing of their first Island album, Catch a Fire, just as he would have handled any rock band’s product, complete with slick promotional efforts and tours of Britain and the United States. Slowly, the Wailers’ sound began to catch on beyond the borders of Jamaica. An important catalyst to their popularity at this time was Eric Clapton’s cover of Marley’s composition, “I Shot the Sheriff,” from the Wailers’ 1973 album Burnin’. Clapton’s version became a worldwide hit, leading many of his fans to discover the Wailers’ music.
As their popularity increased, the original Wailers drew closer to a parting of the ways. Bunny Livingston (who had taken the name Bunny Wailer) disliked leaving Jamaica for extended tours, and Peter Tosh resented Chris Blackwell’s efforts to make Bob the focus of the group. Each launched solo careers in the mid-1970s, while Marley released Natty Dread in 1974, which was hailed by Rolling Stone reviewer Stephen Davis as “the culmination of Marley’s political art to this point.” The reviewer continued: “With every album he’s been rocking a little harder and reaching further out to produce the stunning effect of a successful spell. Natty Dread deals with rebellion and personal liberation.… The artist lays his soul so bare that the careful listener is satiated and exhausted in the end.”Rastaman Vibration was released in 1976 to even more enthusiastic reviews. It was full of acid commentary on the worsening political situation in Jamaica, including a denouncement of the CIA’s alleged involvement in island politics—a bold statement that brought Marley under the surveillance of the CIA and other U.S. intelligence organizations. His prominence in Jamaica reached messianic proportions, causing one Timereporter to exclaim, “He rivals the government as a political force.”
Marley regarded all politicians with skepticism, considering them to be part of what Rastafarians call “Babylon,” or the corrupt Western world. In the election for Prime Minister of Jamaica, however, he was known to favor Michael Manley of the People’s National Party—a socialist group—over Edward Seaga, candidate of the right-wing Jamaican Labour Party. When Manley asked Bob Marley to give a “Smile Jamaica” concert to reduce tensions between the warring gangs associated with the two parties, the singer readily agreed.
Shortly before the concert was to take place on December 3, 1976, Marley’s home was stormed by seven gunmen, suspected henchmen of the Jamaican Labour Party. Marley, his wife, Rita, and their manager Don Taylor were all injured in the ensuing gunfire. Yet despite the assassination attempt, the concert went on as scheduled. An audience of 80,000 people was electrified when Marley, bandaged and unable to strum his guitar, climbed to the stage to begin a blistering ninety-minute set. “At the close of his performance, Bob began a ritualistic dance, acting out aspects of the ambush that had almost taken his life,” reported Timothy White in Catch a Fire: The Life of Bob Marley.“The last [the audience] saw before the reigning King of Reggae disappeared back into the hills was the image of the man mimicking the two-pistoled fast draw of a frontier gunslinger, his locks thrown back in triumphant laughter.”
Immediately after the “Smile Jamaica” concert, Marley left the country, beginning a long term of self-imposed exile. After a period of recuperation, he toured the United States, Europe, and Africa. Reviewing his 1977 release, Exodus, Ray Coleman wrote in Melody Maker:“This is a mesmerizing album… more accessible, melodically richer, delivered with more directness than ever.… After an attempt on his life, Marley has a right to celebrate his existence, and that’s how the album sounds: a celebration.” But Village Voice reviewer Roger Trilling found that Exodus was“underscored by deep personal melancholy, a musical echo of the rootless wanderings that followed [Marley’s] self-exile from Jamaica.”
In 1978, Marley injured his foot during an informal soccer game. The painful wound was slow to heal and finally forced the singer to seek medical help. Doctors informed him that he was in the early stages of cancer and advised amputation of his damaged toe. He refused, because such treatment was not in keeping with Rasta beliefs. Despite worsening health, Marley continued to write and perform until September, 1980, when he collapsed while jogging in New York’s Central Park during the U.S. leg of a world tour. Doctors determined that tumors were spreading throughout his lungs and brain. He underwent radiation therapy and a controversial holistic treatment in the Bavarian Alps, but to no avail. After his death on May 11, 1981, he was given a state funeral in Jamaica, which was attended by more than 100,000 people. Prime Minister Edward Seaga remembered Marley as “a native son… a beloved and departed friend.”“He was a man with deep religious and political sentiments who rose from destitution to become one of the most influential music figures in the last twenty years,” eulogized White in Rolling Stone. He was “an inspiration for black freedom fighters the world over.… When his death was announced, the degree of devastation felt… was incalculable.”
Throughout his life, Marley had always remained a man of the street. Even after earning millions of dollars, he would frequently return to the neighborhood where he grew up, leaving his BMW automobile unlocked at the curb while he visited old friends. His casual disregard for money and material possessions endeared him to the masses but gave rise to a monumental legal tangle after his death. Though his estate was worth an estimated $30 million at the time he passed away, he had scoffed at the idea of a will, believing that such a document showed an inappropriate concern with earthly matters.
Under Jamaican law, half of the estate of a man who dies intestate goes to his widow, while the remainder is divided equally among his children. When the court advertised for heirs, hundreds stepped forth claiming to be Marley’s offspring. Marley’s widow, Rita, became locked in a ten-year battle with the court-appointed administrator of the estate, a conservative lawyer who had not liked Marley when he was alive and who, after the singer’s death, sometimes seemed bent on taking as much as possible from those who had been closest to the deceased. The administrator attempted to evict Marley’s mother from a house her son had given her—on the grounds that the title had never been legally transferred; in a similar fashion, he tried to have property seized from Rita and accused her of illegally diverting royalty money that should have become part of the contested estate.
That royalty money represented a considerable sum. At the time of his death, Marley had sold about $190 million worth of albums and had an average annual royalty income of $200,000. Posthumous releases of his work were ranked high on Billboard’s music charts ten years and more after his death, pushing the annual royalty income to $2.5 million and leading many industry experts to rank Marley as one of the largest-selling recording artists of all time. Control of the rights to his music was as hotly disputed as the division of his estate, with rival record companies trying to wrest control from Rita Marley and Island Records.
Eventually, Rita Marley admitted in court that she had forged her husband’s signature on backdated documents that transferred ownership of some of his companies to her. Showing a disregard for legalities similar to her husband’s, she calmly told a Newsweek reporter that she had been acting on her lawyers’ advice. Firm in her belief that Marley would have wanted her to protect herself and his rightful heirs—which were eventually determined to include his and Rita’s four children, as well as seven other offspring with various women—she asked, “How can I steal from myself?” She was dismissed as an executor of the estate for this transgression but charged with no crime. The battle over Marley’s fortune was finally settled late in 1991. The Jamaican Supreme Court ruled in favor of Rita Marley and Chris Blackwell’s Island Logic Ltd., a company that had controlled the estate since 1989. Under the terms of the court ruling, the estate would be managed by Island Logic for ten more years before passing into the hands of Marley’s widow and his 11 legally recognized children.
Bob Marley’s artistic output was so great that previously unreleased work of his has continued to appear on the market years after his death. In 1992, a 78-song package entitled Songs of Freedomwas released, tracing his career from his first single, “Judge Not,” to a version of his haunting“Redemption Song” recorded at his final concert in 1980. The tenth anniversary of his death was marked by several days of commemorative celebrations in Kingston, and New York Times writer Howard W. French noted that “whereas Marley’s long-haired, ganja-smoking Rastafarian sect was long seen by the staid Establishment [in Jamaica] as an embarrassing threat to tourism, the Jamaica Tourist Board sponsored the memorial [events].” Once shunned, Marley is now acknowledged as the person who, more than any other, has generated lasting interest in his native country.
Marley’s musical legacy can be seen in the continuing popularity of reggae and its pervasive influence on mainstream music. The Melody Makers, arguably the most popular modern reggae group, was formed by Marley himself years ago; its members are his children, led by his oldest son, Ziggy. Yet no one, not even his son, has been able to touch Bob Marley’s position as the undisputed “king of reggae.” French commented on the musician’s lasting popularity: “Marley’s appeal succeeded remarkably in transcending an often-militant lyrical message explicitly centered on the ideal of cultural and spiritual redemption for black people. However racially based his core message, Marley’s dreadlocked look of alienation, and his Old Testament-style prophecies promising the poor that their oppressors would soon ‘eat the bread of sorrow,’carried strong germs of universality.”
David Fricke summarized in Rolling Stone:“Since Jamaica’s favorite musical son succumbed to the ravages of cancer, the search for a worthy successor—a ‘new Marley’ with comparable vision, personality and musical nerve, not to mention the magic crossover touch—has yielded only flawed contenders. . . But looking for a new Marley is as pointless as looking for a new [Bob] Dylan or [Jimi] Hendrix. Bob Marley, like those other two originals, revolutionized pop music in his own singular image, transforming a regional mutant product of Caribbean rhythm, American R & B and African mysticism into a personalized vehicle for spiritual communion, social argument and musical daring.”
Blackbook: International Reference Guide, 1993 Edition, National Publications, 1993, pp. 62-63.
Davis, Stephen, Bob Marley, Doubleday, 1985.
Davis, Stephen, Reggae Bloodlines: In Search of the Music and Culture of Jamaica, Anchor Press, 1979.
Goldman, Vivian, Bob Marley: Soul-Rebel—Natural Mystic, St. Martin’s, 1981.
White, Timothy, Catch a Fire: The Life of Bob Marley, Holt, 1983.
Whitney, Malika Lee, Bob Marley, Reggae King of the World, Dutton, 1984.
Periodicals
Black Stars, July 1979.
Crawdaddy, July 1976; August 1977; May 1978.
Creem, August 1976.
Down Beat, September 9, 1976; September 8, 1977.
Encore, January 1980.
Essence, January 1976.
First World, Number 2, 1979.
Gig, June-July 1978.
Guitar Player, May 1991, p. 82.
Interview, August 1978.
Jet, December 30, 1992.
Los Angeles Times, May 5, 1990; July 16, 1991.
Melody Maker, May 1, 1976; May 14, 1977; November 18, 1978; September 29, 1979.
Mother Jones, July 1985; December 1986.
Newsweek, April 8, 1991, p. 57.
New York Times, May 13, 1991; September 3, 1992; December 13, 1992.
New York Times Magazine, August 14, 1977.
People, April 26, 1976; December 21, 1992.
Playboy, January, 1981.
Rolling Stone, April 24, 1975; June 1, 1978; June 15, 1978; December 28, 1978; January 11, 1979; March 18, 1982; May 27, 1982; June 4,1987; March 7,1991.
Sepia, March 1979.
Spin, June 1991.
Stereo Review, July 1975; September 1977; February 1982.
Time, March 22, 1976, pp. 83-84; December 20, 1976, p. 45; October 19, 1992, pp. 77-78.
Village Voice, June 27,1977; April 17,1978; November 5, 1979.
Washington Post, August 25, 1991.
Obituaries
Jet, May 28, 1981.
Maclean’s, December 28, 1981.
Newsweek, May 25, 1981.
New York Times, May 12, 1981; May 21, 1981.
Rolling Stone, May 28, 1981; June 25, 1981.
Time, May 25, 1981, p. 76.
Variety, May 20, 1981.
Marley’s life and musical career are chronicled in the documentary Time Will Tell, released in 1992 in combination with his retrospective CD package.
Bob Marley, in full Robert Nesta Marley (born February 6, 1945, Nine Miles, St. Ann, Jamaica—died May 11, 1981, Miami, Florida, U.S.), Jamaican singer-songwriter whose thoughtful ongoing distillation of early ska, rock steady, and reggae musical forms blossomed in the 1970s into an electrifying rock-influenced hybrid that made him an international superstar.
Marley—whose parents were Norval Sinclair Marley, a white rural overseer, and the former Cedella Malcolm, the black daughter of a local custos (respected backwoods squire)—would forever remain the unique product of parallel worlds. His poetic worldview was shaped by the countryside, his music by the tough West Kingston ghetto streets. Marley’s maternal grandfather was not just a prosperous farmer but also a bush doctor adept at the mysticism-steeped herbal healing that guaranteed respect in Jamaica’s remote hill country. As a child Marley was known for his shy aloofness, his startling stare, and his penchant for palm reading. Virtually kidnapped by his absentee father (who had been disinherited by his own prominent family for marrying a black woman), the preadolescent Marley was taken to live with an elderly woman in Kingston until a family friend rediscovered the boy by chance and returned him to Nine Miles.
By his early teens Marley was back in West Kingston, living in a government-subsidized tenement in Trench Town, a desperately poor slum often compared to an open sewer. In the early 1960s, while a schoolboy serving an apprenticeship as a welder (along with fellow aspiring singer Desmond Dekker), Marley was exposed to the languid, jazz-infected shuffle-beat rhythms of ska, a Jamaican amalgam of American rhythm and blues and native mento (folk-calypso) strains then catching on commercially. Marley was a fan of Fats Domino, the Moonglows, and pop singer Ricky Nelson, but, when his big chance came in 1961 to record with producer Leslie Kong, he cut “Judge Not,” a peppy ballad he had written based on rural maxims learned from his grandfather. Among his other early tracks was “One Cup of Coffee” (a rendition of a 1961 hit by Texas country crooner Claude Gray), issued in 1963 in England on Chris Blackwell’s Anglo-Jamaican Island Records label.
Marley also formed a vocal group in Trench Town with friends who would later be known as Peter Tosh(original name Winston Hubert MacIntosh) and Bunny Wailer (original name Neville O’Reilly Livingston; b. April 10, 1947, Kingston). The trio, which named itself the Wailers (because, as Marley stated, “We started out crying”), received vocal coaching by noted singer Joe Higgs. Later they were joined by vocalist Junior Braithwaite and backup singers Beverly Kelso and Cherry Green.
In December 1963 the Wailers entered Coxsone Dodd’s Studio One facilities to cut “Simmer Down,” a song by Marley that he had used to win a talent contest in Kingston. Unlike the playful mento music that drifted from the porches of local tourist hotels or the pop and rhythm and blues filtering into Jamaica from American radio stations, “Simmer Down” was an urgent anthem from the shantytown precincts of the Kingston underclass. A huge overnight smash, it played an important role in recasting the agenda for stardom in Jamaican music circles. No longer did one have to parrot the stylings of overseas entertainers; it was possible to write raw, uncompromising songs for and about the disenfranchised people of the West Indian slums.
This bold stance transformed both Marley and his island nation, engendering the urban poor with a pride that would become a pronounced source of identity (and a catalyst for class-related tension) in Jamaican culture—as would the Wailers’ Rastafarian faith, a creed popular among the impoverished people of the Caribbean, who worshiped the late Ethiopian emperor Haile Selassie I as the African redeemer foretold in popular quasi-biblical prophecy. The Wailers did well in Jamaica during the mid-1960s with their ska records, even during Marley’s sojourn to Delaware in 1966 to visit his relocated mother and find temporary work. Reggae material created in 1969–71 with producer Lee Perry increased the contemporary stature of the Wailers; and, once they signed in 1972 with the (by that time) international label Island and released Catch a Fire (the first reggae album conceived as more than a mere singles compilation), their uniquely rock-contoured reggae gained a global audience. It also earned the charismatic Marley superstar status, which gradually led to the dissolution of the original triumvirate about early 1974. Although Peter Tosh would enjoy a distinguished solo career before his murder in 1987, many of his best solo albums (such as Equal Rights [1977]) were underappreciated, as was Bunny Wailer’s excellent solo album Blackheart Man (1976).
Eric Clapton’s version of the Wailers’ “I Shot the Sheriff” in 1974 spread Marley’s fame. Meanwhile, Marley continued to guide the skilled Wailers band through a series of potent, topical albums. By this point Marley also was backed by a trio of female vocalists that included his wife, Rita; she, like many of Marley’s children, later experienced her own recording success. Featuring eloquent songs like “No Woman No Cry,” “Exodus,” “Could You Be Loved,” “Coming in from the Cold,” “Jamming,” and “Redemption Song,” Marley’s landmark albums included Natty Dread(1974), Live! (1975), Rastaman Vibration (1976), Exodus (1977), Kaya(1978), Uprising (1980), and the posthumous Confrontation (1983). Exploding in Marley’s reedy tenor, his songs were public expressions of personal truths—eloquent in their uncommon mesh of rhythm and blues, rock, and venturesome reggae forms and electrifying in their narrative might. Making music that transcended all its stylistic roots, Marley fashioned an impassioned body of work that was sui generis.
He also loomed large as a political figure and in 1976 survived what was believed to have been a politically motivated assassination attempt. Marley’s attempt to broker a truce between Jamaica’s warring political factions led in April 1978 to his headlining the “One Love” peace concert. His sociopolitical clout also earned him an invitation to perform in 1980 at the ceremonies celebrating majority rule and internationally recognized independence for Zimbabwe. In April 1981, the Jamaican government awarded Marley the Order of Merit. A month later he died of cancer.
Although his songs were some of the best-liked and most critically acclaimed music in the popular canon, Marley was far more renowned in death than he had been in life. Legend (1984), a retrospective of his work, became the best-selling reggae album ever, with international sales of more than 12 million copies.
play
Toronto's Mayor declares Bob Marley Day
![Marley, Bob [Credit: © Corbis]](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/blogger_img_proxy/AEn0k_tr659TIgbtTi6HV_KjttspJswVdd1B43qIoh2Q9T_Mb2fJvXr4a7ExFMSlYYXabwt32YmbhAxFqbvqn21HBq8JSeEVO041bcDGqOxmjyNh42Rn3Y6WTElQxkNZWZzUjOF8b90Cbsw=s0-d)
![Marley, Bob [Credit: Jeff Albertson/Corbis]](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/blogger_img_proxy/AEn0k_tHs5c5f85pVnm7kWbfmgr0iwfMA91nYScDERzU7FqGTAv4rIQU4iYz0x3F7oOMNRUGxYTKVd06y7pdHYFpr8F7U4sYjqKhD8IGtColIMcjchnMftRNOIKNpLDGmvN22G9_Fh98-lZN=s0-d)
![Marley, Bob [Credit: Chris Walter—WireImage/Getty Images]](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/blogger_img_proxy/AEn0k_tB_YX7aue4ntbLcR453PTg9DiO0dN3RMI7ZhTouk7ZxZ8DEysPXbkv-_Yd9mTWUSRJ53r3-ZJSwQu9r-BCd76WwFrHLjaZy9CqqyHEXUTasNU0eQGXbYgwyScttH8ihRhfxDKWfjqz=s0-d)
