Marley's legend lives on

2001-05-09 13:09

Paris - In the 20 years since his death at the age of 36 on May 11, 1981, reggae star Bob Marley has, if anything, become even more of a legend.

So much so that the boy from the slums of Kingston, Jamaica, was still earning 10 million dollars for his estate last year, making him the sixth highest "dead" earner in the United States, behind the likes of Elvis Presley, John Lennon and Jimi Hendrix.

But perhaps the most significant posthumous accolade was for his music to be performed in London's Promenade Concert season in 1998, a usually conservative British institution dedicated to classical music.

It was a fitting tribute to a man who pioneered the evolution of Caribbean music from early ska, or bluebeat, through "rock steady" to the now universal sound of reggae, which has broken down musical, cultural and political frontiers around the globe.

However, Marley would have wanted to be remembered as much for his Rastafarian beliefs as for any of his musical achievements, and it is true that without him the rest of the world might never have discovered "dreadlocks", the matted, plaited hair of the followers of Rastafari.

He also practised what he preached, his friend and one-time salvation, Island record boss Chris Blackwell recalls. "He never put himself in a position where he would be seen as being different from anybody else.

"In that respect, he was somebody who lived up to the example of the leaders of all the main religions: there is one quality all such figures have, which is humility. And Bob really had that natural humility. He was also a natural leader. Absolutely, truly natural."

He was also a highly-respected musician, singer and song-writer, despite his almost total lack of formal secondary education and his habit of expressing himself almost exclusively in the local Jamaican patois picked up on the streets of Trenchtown, the government housing scheme where he spent his adolescence.

Eric Clapton, who was instrumental in bringing Marley to a wider audience with his 1974 recording of I Shot The Sheriff, was once asked to sum him up in a few words, and had no hesitation in saying: "He was a great lyric writer, a musical genius and a great leader of men."

Robert Nesta Marley was born in St Ann on February 6, 1945, the son of a teenage Jamaican girl called Cedella Booker and a 50-year-old quartermaster attached to the British West Indian Regiment, Captain Norval Marley.

The captain rapidly disappeared from their lives, but provided financial support even after the couple moved to Trenchtown in 1957.

Marley drifted around the Kingston music scene throughout the 1960s, eventually joining up with Neville "Bunny" Livingstone and Peter Macintosh (who would become Peter Tosh) to form the Wailers.

In 1971, the band found themselves stranded in London without a penny and Marley looked up Blackwell, a white Jamaican in charge of Island Records, and was rewarded with the fare home and money to record their first album.

Catch A Fire, released in 1973, was the first reggae record to be marketed like a rock album rather than being a compilation of songs from a variety of artists, and the legend was born.

The classic Burnin, from which Clapton culled I Shot the Sheriff, followed the same year, with Natty Dread and a live album in 1975. A memorable track from the latter, a version of No Woman, No Cry, provided Marley not only with the biggest hit during his lifetime, but it also became a rare example of a live recording making the charts.

In 1978, they returned to Jamaica in triumph for the One Love Peace concert, at which Marley brought then prime minister Malcolm Manley and opposition leader Edward Seaga on stage and made them shake hands.

It was also the year he received the United Nations medal of Peace in New York and first visited Ethiopia, the spiritual home of Rastafari.

The band played their first gig in Africa in 1980, in Gabon, and were then invited to play at newly-liberated Zimbabwe's Independence Ceremony in April, underlining their importance in the Third World.

Later that same year, at the end of European tour, which included playing to a 100 000 crowd in Milan, the Wailers went to America but after two shows at Madison Square Garden, Marley was taken seriously ill.

Three years earlier, he had injured his toe playing football in London and the wound had become cancerous. By 1980, the disease had spread through his body and a brain tumour was diagnosed, which he fought for eight months, even undergoing treatment at the Bavarian clinic of the controversial Dr Joseph Issels.

But, realising the end was near, at the beginning of May, Marley decided he wanted to die at home and left Germany for Jamaica, but he never made it and died in a Miami hospital.

- Sapa-AFP

- SAPA