Remembering Bob Marley

Mo Familee Band, Ras Jabulani and Crucial Mix, Sister Thanda and many others gave their best performances to celebrate Bob Marley’s life.

Since his death, countless tribute records have been released; none finer than Bunny Wailer’s “Tribute” collection of Marley compositions.

A film of his life has been made, incorporating vintage footage and there is a book “Bob Marley, Soul Rebel-Natural Rebel” by photographer Adrian Boot and journalist Vivien Goldman.

Bob Marley continues to attract attention throughout the world even though he died 32 years ago because without Bob Marley, reggae music would still be largely confined to a handful of singers, bands and sound systems dotted around the Caribbean and among West Indian communities in the cities of Britain and North America.

Through his devotion to the principles of Rastafari, Marley preached strength and social unity to oppressed peoples across the globe.

His music crossed racial boundaries, providing black people with a new level of dignity. Since his death, there has been an uneasy vacuum within the music, as if it is marking time until another prophet, with the capacity to carry millions, takes up his role.

Marley’s passion for music was born from two sources.
The first was his mother, Cedella Booker, who sang gospel in the neighbourhood Apostolic Church.

The other was his close friend Joe Higgs, who he would visit to discuss religion and listen to discs by the Impressions and the Ink Spots.

Their falsetto harmonies were to become central to his music in its formative days. Lacking educational qualifications, Marley was shunted off by Cedella to find employment as an apprentice welder.

He struck up friendships with Desmond Dekker and Jimmy Cliff and they and Higgs convinced Marley that he should develop his singing and learn to play the guitar.

At 16, Bob Marley made his debut at Kingston’s very first recording studio, Federal, owned by producer Ken Khouri, a relation of the late Byron Lee of the Dragonnaires. Issued in 1961, the song entitled ‘Judge Not’, co-written by Marley and Higgs was a plea for society not to hastily judge the ghetto rude boys for the way they dressed.

He had set the scene for message that was to make him famous. His next recording (often credited as his first) was “One Cup of Coffee”, made the slightest impression upon Jamaican record buyers and he was forced to return to the welder’s yard.

Marley reacted to the street violence with “Simmer Down’” the first Wailing Wailers release for Clement Coxsone Dodd’s Studio One. It was an instant success, selling in excess of 80 000 copies.

Marley was reported as saying he received no royalties for the record, a resentment he carried with him for many years.

The Wailers’ quintet, backed by the Skatalites, recorded a string of hits with Coxsone under the banners of Wailin’ Wailers and Wailin’ Rude Boys.

Their songs varied from the deviant rock-steady and ska of “Rude Boy”, “Rule the Rudie” and “Rude Boy go to Jail’’ to the more soulful American-influenced ballads, |Lonesome Feeling”, “I Need You”, “Put It On” and “Wings of Love”.

In 1966 the group underwent a traumatic change. Braithwaite quit to join his parents in America and Kelso and another occasional member, Cherry, also left. Marley, Tosh and Wailer continued to work with Coxsone, although they finally threw in the towel when the arguments over payment became too much to bear.

Cedella had moved to Delaware, USA, where Marley joined her, securing a job at the Chrysler car factory. His experiences on the assembly line were immortalised on a song, “Night Shift’”

To his horror, his promised quiet life was shattered when he received his military conscription papers. To avoid being drafted and shipped off to Vietnam, he returned to Jamaica.

Marley joined Tosh and Wailer and recorded two singles with Leslie Kong, a Chinese producer, in Jamaica.

Their next stop was the newly built Black Ark Studio belonging to Lee Perry, the impish genius they had befriended at Studio One, where he had been employed as an arranger. This period is generally regarded as the foundation of Marley’s career.

With Perry’s idiosyncratic studio tuition the Wailers hit the public with songs that are part of the group’s legend. “Duppy Conquerer”, their first international hit, “Small Axe”, “Trenchtown Rock”, “Soul Rebel”, “Don’t Rock My Boat”, “Keep Your Love Light Burning”, “The Sun Is Shining”, “Lively Up Yourself” and Curtis Mayfield’s “Keep on Moving” were their greatest achievements.

Many of these songs will be familiar to second generation Wailers fans and even to Zimbabweans born after his death as Marley re-recorded several of them for his Island Records albums.

Garvey’s teachings on the subject of repatriation to Africa were beginning to filter through the group.
Wailer rejected his previous lifestyle and the words of Garvey, possibly from discussions with their colleagues. Fundamental to the ideology, many would say fundamental to reggae, is the consumption of vast quantities of ganja, i.e. Jamaican marijuana that grows in abundance on the island.

Marley is reputed to have smoked his way through a pound of ganja a week. Possession is nonetheless illegal in Jamaica and in 1968 he was busted and served time in jail.

Marley’s admiration for Perry never faltered, however, and while contracted to Island he returned to his mentor to cut the singles “Jah Live” (1976) and “Punky Reggae Party”.

With the payment he received, Marley returned to Peter Tosh and Bunny Wailer with the blueprint for another label. It was Tuff Gong (Perry used to call himself The Gong), operating out of 127 King Street, Kingston. With recorded versions of “Trenchtown Rock”, “Screw Face”, “Hypocrite” and the melancholic “Satisfy My Soul” their destiny was assured.

Perry had helped the trio to learn their respective instruments: Marley acoustic guitar; Tosh keyboards and lead guitar; Wailer percussion, adding their musicianship to the Barrett brothers. It was a completely individual sound, a hybrid of rock-steady and reggae and they soon attracted the attention of Island Records supreme Chris Blackwell.

Stories of why Blackwell signed the group vary. A fascination with Rastafari coupled to a strong belief that reggae could, if marketed correctly, become an international music force, seem the most likely reasons. In any case, Blackwell knew they would have to move cautiously.

White European and American audiences could not be expected to change their attitudes and tastes in music overnight and latch on to reggae immediately.

Blackwell financed the sophisticated “Catch a Fire” (1973), a strong collection of diverse songs, packaged in an imitation Zippo lighter sleeve. It sold well enough for Blackwell to be as good as his word and take Bob Marley and the Wailers under the Island Records wing. Under Blackwell, Marley toured Britain with Tosh and Wailer.

But acrimony had set in within the group. Wailer refused to tour again and Tosh began to express unease about the deal with Island. Neither was to perform as a Wailer again, although the termination of their artistic relationship couldn’t extinguish a lasting mutual respect and friendship.

To fill the vacancy in the harmony section, Marley’s wife Rita, Judy Mowatt and Marcia Griffiths all professional singers were enlisted as “The 1-Threes”.

With American guitarist AI Anderson and Bernard “Touter” Harvey, Marley went on to record the album that finally set the seal on his career.

“Natty Dread” (1975) was a landmark for Marley and the Wailers, combining the spiritualism of Rastafari with the humour and warmth of its creator’s romantic moments.

It contained compelling new versions of “Lively up Yourself” and “Bend Down Low” and new compositions “Them Belly Full” and “No Woman No Cry”.

Those songs were taken to London that summer and at a memorable night at London’s Lyceum, still spoken of with reference, the future of reggae was cast

After the release of “Rastaman Vibrations” (1976) and the annual tours, Marley’s position as an international musician and statesman made him a target of warring gunmen in Jamaica.

In December of that year, at the height of pre-election political gang violence, seven armed men burst into his home at 56 Hope Road, Kingston.

If his manager, Don Taylor, hadn’t flung himself in front of the singer, Marley would have sustained more serious injury than four bullet wounds in an arm. Rita was also injured in the incident.

The attack occurred on the eve of a concert he was due to appear organised by the then ruling PNP party led by Michael Manley.

Despite his injuries, Marley performed at the concert although immediately after, for his safety, he left Jamaica for an 18-month exile in Miami.

The magnificent “Exodus” album (1977) was recorded partly in Miami and partly in London. The sheer political fury of that record played a vital role in dragging him back to Jamaica.

When he did return it was one of the most moving spectacles ever witnessed on the island. In front of an estimated 20 000 people at Kingston’s National Stadium; he brought together in a handshake Michael Manley and the ex-opposition leader now Premier Edward Seaga.

The concert was the beginning of a temporary truce between the rival factions and a commemoration of a visit to Jamaica exactly 12 years before by Ethiopia’s Emperor Haile Selassie, a man at the helm of Rastafarian philosophy of repatriation to Africa.
It was almost inevitable that a man so identified with the struggles against class and racial oppression should be invited to perform at the celebrations of the birth of a new nation, Zimbabwe.

On April 18, 1980, Bob Marley performed at Rufaro Stadium in Harare and celebrated Zimbabwe’s independence.

Towards the close of an exhausting world tour (1980) Marley collapsed after a concert at New York’s Madison Square Gardens and was taken to Sloane Kettering Hospital where cancer was diagnosed.

Some months later it became known that he had a cancerous toe removed while in Miami three years before.

The extent of his illness could be gauged by his decision to admit himself to the Josef Issels Clinic, on Lake Tegarn, Bavaria. Upon completion of the treatment he flew to Miami, to visit Cedella, en route to Jamaica.

His discomfort must have been chronic and on May 8 he admitted himself to the Cedars Lebanon Hospital where he died three days later on May 11.

He was provided with a state funeral in Jamaica. Bob Marley had been the biggest single foreign currency earner in Jamaica leaving an estimated US$46 million behind.
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