Tuesday, March 08, 2011

Gnarley Marley

(Let us hope this is the last of those travel posts that Tabor has become so dependant on. No original thoughts rattling around in her brain...certainly!  What a real bore she would be if she didn't travel.)


Bob Marley is an icon and hero to most of Jamaica.  They revere him as many revered Elvis Presley in the U.S. but his story is much more compelling.  His music is timeless, at least to me.  When I listen to it I feel young and there.  He wrote and sang protest music about the condition of mankind.

We toured his home and studio.  Much of it bare rooms except for the bedroom and kitchen.  There are marvelous posters, news articles, and award albums on the walls and Marley music constantly playing in the background.  (We were not allowed to take photos.)  What is fun is the way the tour guide hums and dances to the music as she brings us through the rooms and tells his story.  It seems everyone in Jamaica can carry a tune...two of our tour guides sang to us that week.   I barely understand the Rastafari religion, but it is certainly quirky and deep, vegan diet and ganga weed combined and the belief that Haile Sellassie, who traced his roots to Solomon and Sheba, was seen as the black holy king to lead the negro race.


Less quirky and more common was that Marley was born to an 18-year-old black girl (Cedella Booker) and fathered by Captain Norval Marley, a 50-year-old quartermaster attached to the British West Indian Regiment and a plantation owner.  Marley's parents were married, and thus, the Captain was forced to provide some financial support, but provided little else in the role of fatherhood for this young man before he died, Marley was 10 at that time.  Even without a father Marley grew up to be one of the most significant peace makers across racial lines in Jamaica with his music, traveling a marvelous journey from a poor home in Trenchtown outside Kingston to the homes of global leaders.  Bob Marley and the Wailing Wailers had their first big hit in 1963.  Bob Marley married and had three children.  He had at least eleven children total in his life when including those with other women.

His growing international popularity also brought him into the arena of politics and to the front of the ongoing ghetto wars in Jamaica.  He and band members were shot while rehearsing in his home in 1976 in a hail of gunfire from the yard outside, perhaps because of a free concert he was planning to give to attempt some peace among his people.  They have covered most of the walls in this tragic room with board but left one bullet hole to view.  It is shockingly large and deep. He bravely played the controversial free concert the next night with a bullet still inside him and forced the two opposing political leaders to hold hands before the crowd (see the photo of the opportunists below).  This violent attack later caused him to go into a retreat in London, and he did not return to his beloved homeland until April of 1978.


Bob Marley was also a fitness nut in that he ran almost every day and loved to play soccer.  An infection from a toe injury turned cancerous in his early 30's and he was told he would have to have the toe amputated.  He refused and within a few years he died of brain cancer at the age of 36.  This is just a thumbprint of the exotic life he led (excluding working as a lab assistant for Dupont) and if you search the Internet you can hear Buffalo Soldier, One Love, I Shot the Sheriff, and you will find so much more.

"The compilation album Legend (1984), released three years after his death, is reggae's best-selling album, going ten times Platinum (Diamond) in the U.S.,"  Wikipedia.


14 comments:

  1. Fascinating stuff....Wouldn't have the toe cut off so the cancer metastasized. Yes, I've finally come to terms with his music.....but his drug use was at the core of everything else. What can I say....I throw my hands up in the air. Shrug my shoulders. LOL

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  2. I didn't realize I knew so little about Bob Marley. Always loved his music,especially "No, Woman, No Cry." I read somewhere that the second 'no' is pronounced 'nuh' and really means 'don't' in Jamaican patois. I can't imagine keeping a toe at the cost of my life.

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  3. It is too bad he didn't agree to the amputation - he may still have been alive had he done so. I know very little about him too, but I've always enjoyed listening to some of his music.

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  4. I'll bet a complete biography of him is good reading. Thanks for your take on it.

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  5. I never knew that stuff about Bob. I'd have my cancerous toe lopped off in a heartbeat, though.

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  6. Anonymous5:37 PM

    Great post, Tabor. I really enjoyed reading about Marley. I knew of him, but nothing about him.

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  7. I love Bob Marley's music and Ziggy's. I've had a hard time aligning the nature of his music with his personal life, not only a womanizer (a cultural and religious thing) but I also heard he was physical rough with his kids.

    We had a a poster of him in our living for years and at least 3 people thought it was Joe!

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  8. My grandson is fascinated by Bob Marley - loves the music, wants to do dreadlocks, good heavens.

    Very interesting story, much I didn't know! Thanks for sharing!

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  9. Great post! Please keep the "travel" stories coming.

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  11. It's good to travel vicariously. Thanks

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  12. Nicely told. You filled in quite a few blanks that I did not know about him. It must have been a very interesting tour.

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  14. Tabor - thank you so much for this. I've known of Bob Marley, of course, but not all these fascinating facts about his life.

    Love you new blog, BTW. Enjoy your travels...

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