Remembering the Reggae King

Bimal Saigal –Last Saturday, the February 6th was Reggae King Rastafarian Bob Marley’s 70th birth anniversary. This brought in memories of the grand celebrations of his 60th birthday at downtown Kingston, Jamaica in 2005, which I had the privilege to be part of. 

The musical concert named ‘Rasta Heart — A Journey into One Love’ to fete this Jamaican icon of Reggae music was organised at a wide road in Kingston downtown and was attended by thousands of lovers of Bob Marley’s music.

Invited from the diplomatic corps as the then Acting High Commissioner of India, I was seated in the front rows just behind the Governor-General. Jamaica, the country of ‘Out of many, one people’ was honouring her worthy son who had won international fame and acclaim with his reggae music and has been a legendary symbol of the Jamaican identity and culture world-wide. 

Being a committed Rastafarian, Bob Marley infused spirituality in his music, making reggae music a craze of the period and for all times to come. The day was the finale in Kingston of the celebrations through such peace concerts launched in 2001. Governor-General, Sir Howard Felix Hanlan Cooke, who was the chief guest at the function, happened to be the longest serving Governor-General of Jamaica from August 1991 to February 2006. 

His official residence at Hope Road was only a block away from my Poinciana Place residence. I recall that during the ceremony of presentation of credentials to him by my High Commissioner, he had fondly told us that his mother was of Indian origin. 

I was pleasantly surprised as once while he was being given a tour of the new location of the cricket headquarters, spotting me in his accompaniment he abruptly turned back and extended his hand to me and paused a while to exchange pleasantries. That was him. Sadly, he died in July 2014 at the age of 98.

Apart from Jamaicans, it was a day of celebrations for Ethiopians as well. Ethiopians take pride in their imperial past and the successful resistance given to the European colonialism, and revere Bob Marley, the Rastafarian icon as he infused the heritage pride in Africans across borders. 

The Rastafari faith comes from the reverence the Africans have for the last bastion of the African freedom in those colonial times — Emperor Haile Selassie, who ruled Ethiopia from 1930 till his death in 1974. The word Rastafari has its origin in the Emperor’s name: Ras is derived from his title and Tafari from his name- Tafari Makonnen. 

Rastafarians worship him and his unsurmountable spirit of independence and resistance. Like many Indian sadhus, the Rastafarians wear long dreadlocks both in hair and beard and a way of life called Babylon that endorses rejection of the degenerate society of materialism, oppression, and sensual pleasures.

‘Africa Unite: A celebration of Bob Marley’s 60th birthday’ in Addis Ababa was, therefore, held at much grand scale where people from over forty countries came to participate and it had also the attraction of Rita Marley, the widow of Bob Marley and his mother, Cedella Booker. 

Though, she was also born in Jamaica, Rita Marley believes that the legacy of Bob Marley as a Rastafarian belongs to Africa as a whole and, therefore, during those 60th birthday celebrations, much against the protests of his Jamaican fans, she planned to have the body of Bob Marley exhumed from Jamaica and buried in Ethiopia, which she thought should be his “spiritual resting place”. 

The legendary singer is known as one of the most influential musicians of all time, who popularised reggae music around the globe. Reggae is a form of pop music that originated in Jamaica. It combines the elements of calypso and rhythm with strongly accentuated offbeat.

His songs were spiritually inspiring for invoking the ethos of love and peace. But having been born in Trenchtown, a slum in the neighbourhood of Kingston and having lived a life of poverty, deprivation and discrimination in ghettos rife with violence, popularity of his songs is also because they are about defiance, rebellion and revolution. In 1975, Marley’s ‘No Woman, No Cry’ gave him his international breakthrough. 

Release of his album ‘Exodus’ two years later in 1977 established him among the world’s best-selling artistes of all time with sales of over 75 million records. While his popular number ‘One Love’ propagates peace and universal brotherhood, thus inspiring Africans divided over the continents. As a human rights activist he asks the oppressed brethren to raise their voice. In his ‘Get up, stand up’ he advocates rebellion and violence in ‘Revolution’, and even goes one step ahead with his ‘Burnin and Lootin’. 

The Zimbabwean government honoured him at the 1980 Independence Day celebrations as his music had inspired freedom fighters in the bush. During the uprising of 1989, for the rebellious Chinese students at the Tiananmen Square, ‘Get up, stand up’ was the marching song.

 ‘TIME’ magazine had declared his album ‘Exodus’ as the album of the century and his song ‘One Love’ was declared the song of the millennium by BBC. In the recent past when Nasa’s rover Curiosity landed on the surface of Mars in August 2014, ‘Get up, stand up’ was played to mark the human achievement.

During 1977, Bob Marley was diagnosed with a type of malignant melanoma under the nail of a toe. The treatment at that time lay in amputation of the toe but it was not acceptable to him due to his religious beliefs. The malignancy spread and later as his condition deteriorated while he was returning home to Jamaica, he needed immediate medical attention and had to disembark at Miami where he breathed his last on May 11, 1981, at the young age of 36.

Bob Marley museum in Kingston was located near to our Poinciana Place house. Though the entrance fee of $25 was quite a deterrent, I had the chance to visit the facility a couple of times in the company of dignitaries from India. Wife of Bob Marley dedicated the house that he bought in 1975 and lived in till his death in 1981, to his memory in 1986. In 2001, Jamaican government declared it as a national heritage site.

Apart from his living quarters and personal belongings, it has a recording studio and houses the musical instruments and recording equipment used by him and his group. It also has a well-equipped 80-seat theatre where the visitors are treated to a 20-minute documentary on the life of the icon, who apart from being a versatile singer and guitarist was also a lyricist and music composer as well. 

Bullet marks on the walls of the recording room, when he escaped an assassination attempt on December 3, 1976, are still preserved. He escaped with minor injuries on his chest and arm while his wife and manager were hurt seriously but recovered fully later.

The charisma of Bob Marley has since evolved into a global symbol, which has been merchandised with his works and images all over the world through a variety of mediums — be they T-shirts, caps, books, posters, records, cassettes, CDs, wall plates, wall clocks, coffee cups, figurines or any other conceivable form of memorabilia. Surely this Reggae King would rule our hearts for a long time to come.

/Oman Observer.