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Bob Marley’s spirit lives on
By Isdore Guvamombe
On Saturday February 6 2010, Bob Marley would have turned 65. What would he be singing about today if he was still alive?
In 1981, I was a spike-haired young man seeking religious identity. I had been baptised under the Johane Masowe Apostolic Faith sect, but my heart was just not there so I opted for Rastafarianism.
I sat before my father’s 14-inch battery-powered black and white television set in the comfort of our rural home in Guruve, watching a reggae session.
Clad in faded jeans, the musician’s hair hung in dreadlocks on a tilted head that shook systematically in rhythm with his lyrics. Hands deftly strummed the acoustic guitar as if there was no tomorrow.
Purposefully curved lips poured out emotional lyrics while his watery eyes stared into some eternity only seen by himself, like a spirit medium in a trance.
His other hand gesticulated in flowing, effective communication that catapults the crowd into madness. At the end it was the playfulness, the gritty grooviness of his bass and the lyrics that made the song heavily touching.
Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery
None but ourselves can free our minds
Have no fear for atomic energy
Cause none of them can stop the time
How long shall they kill our prophets
While we stand aside and look?
Redemption Song, as I saw it for the first time on that black and white television set, was and still remains to me — when skinned to its barest bones — Marley’s voice and his acoustic guitar. It still remains today, the man and his heart and soul.
Unlike most of Marley’s tracks, it is strictly a solo acoustic recording, consisting of him singing and playing an acoustic guitar, without accompaniment.
This is just but one of the huge lists of Marley songs that carried politically conscious songs throughout his career, until cancer cut short his life.
Today, February 6 2010, would have marked Bob Marley’s 65th birthday, had he not died in his prime on May 11 1981 at the age of 36. One thing I am sure of is, when he died of cancer none of his followers expected it to happen. Until today they feel robbed and cheated by fate.
Many of his staunchest supporters, yours truly involved, wonder what Marley would have achieved if he had lived to today yet a few others think he had lived his life to the full. By the time of his death he had fathered 12 children with nine women.
Marley remains a legend whose music still touches the hearts of billions of people in the world. Many believed and still say he was prophet because he was not only optimistic, a visionary, especially when it came to Africa.
Marley became a leading proponent of the Rastafari community, taking their music out of the socially deprived areas of Jamaica and onto the international music scene.
He was affiliated to the Twelve Tribes Mansion. He was in the denomination known as "Tribe of Joseph", because he was born in February, each of the 12 sects being composed of members born in a distinct month.
As genuine Rastas practice a diet excluding meat, which is known as Ital, Marley was a vegetarian. He signified this in his album liner notes, where he quoted the section from Genesis that includes Jacob’s blessing to his son Joseph.
Marley was baptised by the Archbishop of the Ethiopian Orthodox Christian Church in Kingston, Jamaica, on November 4, 1980.
One of 20th century’s most iconic Rastafarian figures, Marley was almost single-handedly responsible for popularising reggae music throughout the world. His unique blend of politically conscious lyrics and melody won him legions of fans far beyond Jamaica.
But Marley was no mere pop star: his strong attachment to Rasta beliefs and practices and his fierce hostility to the injustice made him an important spokesman for the dispossessed.
Bob Marley was born in the small village of Nine Miles in Saint Ann Parish, Jamaica as Nesta Robert Marley. His father, Norval Sinclair Marley, was a Jamaican of English descent, whose family came from Essex, England. Norval was a captain in the Royal Marines, as well as a plantation overseer, when he married Cedella Booker, a 17-year-old Afro-Jamaican. Norval provided financial support for his wife and child, but seldom saw them, as he was often away on trips.
In 1955, when Marley was 10 years old, his father died of a heart attack at the age of 60. He subsequently dropped out of school at the age of 14 but read a lot on Marcus Garvey.
Marley suffered racial prejudice as a youth because of his mixed race origins, and faced questions about his own racial identity throughout his life. He once reflected:
"I don’t have prejudice against myself. My father was white and my mother was black. Them call me half-caste or whatever. Me don’t dip on nobody’s side. Me don’t dip on the black man’s side nor the white man’s side. Me dip on God’s side, the one who create me and cause me to come from black and white."
Although Marley recognised his mixed ancestry, throughout his life and because of his beliefs, he self-identified as a black African.
In songs like "Babylon System", and "Blackman Redemption", Marley sings about the struggles of blacks and Africans against oppression from the West or "Babylon". Even after his death the struggle between Africa and the West continues.
In 1966, Marley married Rita Anderson, and moved near his mother’s residence in Wilmington, Delaware, in the United States for a short time, during which he worked as a lab assistant at DuPont and on the assembly line at a Chrysler plant, under the pseudonym Donald Marley.
On return to Jamaica, Marley became a member of the Rastafari movement, and started to wear his trademark dreadlocks. His music then slowly but surely started being identified with national and international politics.
Rita already had two children from her previous affairs but Marley adopted them. He was to have three children with Rita and nine others with different women, including one born soon after his death.
In 1975, Marley had his international breakthrough with his first hit outside Jamaica, "No Woman, No Cry", from the Natty Dread album.
In December 1976, two days before "Smile Jamaica", a free concert organised by then Jamaican Prime Minister Michael Manley in an attempt to ease tension between two warring political groups, Marley, his wife Rita, and manager Don Taylor were shot and wounded by unknown gunmen inside Marley’s home. Taylor and Rita sustained serious injuries, but later made full recoveries. Marley received minor wounds in the chest and arm.
The shooting was thought to have been politically motivated, as many felt the concert was really a support rally for Manley.
However, the concert proceeded, and an injured Marley performed as scheduled, two days after the attempt. When asked why, Marley responded: "The people who are trying to make this world worse aren’t taking a day off. How can I?"
Members of the group Zap Pow, which had no radical religious or political beliefs, played as Bob Marley’s back-up band before a festival crowd of 80 000 while members of The Wailers were still missing or in hiding.
Marley left Jamaica at the end of 1976 for England, where he spent two years in self-imposed exile. While there, he recorded his Exodus and Kaya albums. Exodus stayed on the British album charts for 56 consecutive weeks. It included four UK hit singles: "Exodus", "Waiting in Vain", "Jamming", and "One Love". During his time in London, he was arrested and convicted for possession of a small quantity of mbanje.
In 1978, Marley returned to Jamaica and performed at another political concert, the One Love Peace Concert, again in an effort to calm warring parties.
Near the end of the performance, by Marley’s request, Michael Manley, leader of then ruling People’s National Party, and his political rival Edward Seaga, leader of the opposing Jamaica Labour Party, joined each other on stage and shook hands. Such was Marley’s touch.
The singer had earlier released his first hit single in the UK Top 40 with "No Woman, No Cry". He entered the American Top Ten the next year. Marley was a member of the Rastafari movement, whose culture was a key element in the development of reggae.
On April 18 1980, he made his last appearance on the continent he so loved, Africa, through a performance at independence celebrations in Zimbabwe.
Bob Marley died at the height of his fame at the age of 36, but his music continues to thrive. "Legend", a posthumous compilation of his greatest hits, is one of the best selling albums to be released.
Feedback:Isadore.guvamombe@zimpapers.co.zw |
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