some Bob Marley thoughts

  First... a very brief but super important explanation of Rastafarianism.  I bet you didn't know this, and it will blow your mind.  A Rastafarian is a religion who believes that Jesus Christ came back to Earth to live as a mortal... in our times.  Haile Selassie was the king of Ethiopia for about 35 years about 100 years ago.  (ed note:  1930-1974).  Rastas believe he was the black jesus returned to save us.  They believe the saw the stigmata on his hands themselves.  Bob's wife claims she saw his bloodied christ-like hand wounds in person with her own two eyes.  They believe his biblical name is Ras Tafari.  The most interesting thing about this is Rastafarianism is WAY bigger in Jamaica than it is in Ethiopia.  I got to talking to an Ethiopian driver in Eastern Europe over several hours.  I asked him about it, and I was very apologetic up front.  I said stuff like "this isn't my business, and I hope its not offensive... but do you believe in story of Hailie Sellasi as black Jesus, and the whole Rastafarian thing?"   Thank god, he wasn't even a little offended.  He told  me he didn't mind at all, and he thought it was all nonsense.  He also told me its not an Africa thing at all, but a Jamaican thing.

If you believe that a Jesus came back to us in modern times to lead us, I would tell you it wasn't Haile Sellasi.  It was Bob Marley.  You can quote me on that.

ok... back to our scheduled programming

Here is a reason to love Bob Marley that I guarantee you’ve never heard.  Value.  I found Bob Marley in the late 80s… aka the cassette tape years.  Tapes were very expensive.  A new tape cost $10, and minimum wage was $3.35.   Now (2024) a new cassette or CD would still cost about $10.  For some reason, Island Records (Bob’s label) would put an entire album on one side of the tape.  On the other side of the (cassette) tape it was… the same album again.  So, I would buy a Bob Marley tape, and a pal would buy a (different) Bob Marley tape.  Then, we would dub each other’s tape on the other side.  This assumes you had a double tape deck, and a piece of scotch tape to cover the anti-piracy tabs.

I just saw the movie and I didn’t like it at all.  I don’t think it captured Bob even a tiny bit.  The actor looked nothing like him.  As my wife added “He’s too pretty”.  Another thing the movie doesn’t bother with is the music.  When people talk about Bob Marley, they talk about everything except the music.  Bob had a crack band.  Holy shit his bass player was AMAZING.  That band was musically so tight and so talented its a shame they don’t get recognized at all.  Another piece of the music… Bob’s singing.  Bob was a really really good singer.  There are plenty of artists whose singing just ok enough to get their message across… and their other talents carry the day.  Think here of Bob Dylan, Jimi Hendrix, and I’ll even say Eric Clapton.  Bob was so incredibly magnetic and powerful and luminous that he would have succeeded as just an ok singer… but he wasn’t.  Listen to ‘Redemption Song’.  Its’ quite important to listen to Bob’s music if you want to know his message.  This is because to this day no one has a goddamn idea what Bob Marley said when he was speaking.  Pull up a video of him… any video.  You will catch about 10% of his words.  You’ll get the gist, though.

In closing… if you watch the movie… I feel you will truly get a better sense of Bob Marley from the end credits scene (which shows actual archival Bob Marley footage) than you get in the entire 90 minutes leading up.

Also… where was Peter Tosh?  Where was Eric Clapton?  Why would Eric Clapton be in the movie?  He discovered Bob Marley and brought him to the world.  With Clapton, Bob would still have been all those great things… and would have made almost all of that great music.  Bob would still be dead, and still be a king of Jamaica and all reggae.  These things are true with or without Eric Clapton.  The difference Clapton made is because of him… you and I know who Bob is.

One last interesting story about Bob, and the movie did touch on this.  Bob’s given name was Nesta.  He anglicized (whitened) it to ‘Bob’.  It was a business move akin to when you call a call center in India and the guy answering says his name is ‘Mike’.  That part isn’t interesting, but this is.  Bob had a million kids, one of them was David.  He gave this child a ‘white’ name to make things easier.  His son wanted to sound less white… and so dropped his given name and took his middle name.  Long story short… Nesta Robert Marley took his middle name to sound less foreign/black/exotic…whatever.   Ziggy David Marley did the same swap but for the exact opposite reasons.