Ethiopia set for Rasta party
2005-01-31 15:20
Addis Ababa - Hundreds of thousands of Rastafarians and music lovers are descending on the Ethiopian capital this week for massive celebrations to mark the 60th birthday of late reggae superstar Bob Marley.
Organizers expect as many as 400 000 people, most of them foreigners, to crowd Addis Ababa for the month-long festivities that kick off on Tuesday, the first time the annual event is being held outside Marley's Jamaica birthplace.
"It has always been the wish of Bob Marley to return to Ethiopia and become a Rastafarian... and with the African Union, Addis Ababa is the capital of Africa and therefore a very symbolic place," Marley's widow, Rita, said.
Adherents to the Rastafarian movement that Marley championed regard former Ethiopian emperor Haile Selassie (Ras Tafari) as their spiritual leader and for the past two years Addis Ababa has been headquarters to the African Union.
Thus, Ethiopia is a natural venue for the commemoration, dubbed "Africa Unite," that will feature concerts, lectures, art exhibits and raise funds for Somali victims of the Indian Ocean tsunami, a youth centre and a museum to honour Haile Selassie.
On Friday, Rita Marley gave added weight to the country's importance to Rastafarians by announcing plans to eventually rebury her husband, now interred in Jamaica, in Ethiopia.
"It was a dream of Bob Marley and it is a dream of the family to bury him in Ethiopia," she said. "As we believe in what is to be, must be, it will happen in due course."
Two years before his death from cancer at age 36 in 1981, Bob Marley visited Ethiopia, making a pilgrimage to Shashamene, a Rastafarian settlement south of Addis Ababa built on land donated by Haile Selassie in 1948.
It is there where Rita Marley says her husband's remains will be re-buried and this month Shashamene will serve as an alternate site for events related to his February 6 birthday celebrations between February 11 and 13.
In Addis Ababa, the festivities will begin with a peace parade through the streets and a mini-concert by Cendella Marley Booker, Marley's 80-year mother, on Tuesday.
The peak of the celebrations will be on Sunday at the Meskel Square when the Marley family, Babaa Maal and Youssou N'Dour from Senegal, Angelique Kidjo, the Beninoise singer, Ethiopian Teddy Afro, Shaggy and India Arie will perform at an open-air gala concert.
On the sidelines, there will be a concert featuring Angelique Kidjo and I-three, on February 4, an African art exhibition and three conferences between February 2 and 4 on African unity.
The conferences will take the themes of some of the superstar's most famous hits: Africa Unite, No Woman No Cry, and Redemption Song.
In addition, the foundation for a statue honouring the reggae legend will be erected at intersection in the capital and Rita Marley is to use the occasion launch her book My Life with Bob Marley.