Bob Marley: Natty dread, pop idol, or national hero – Part 2

Bob Marley’s contribution to Jamaican development and international progress crosses into areas as diverse as education, religion, tourism, business, sociology, history, identity, the arts, and family life. Yes, family life. Marley’s attention to discipline, self-worth, education, and, above all, his love for family and humanity have resulted in the dedication and success displayed by his offspring.

Among the grassroots, especially in the 60- and 70-something age group, Marley is already a Jamaican national hero. He is acclaimed, as such for the poetic majesty and musical logic in his songs and for achieving music of vast influence that did not lose touch with his native language. While extending cultural icon Louise Bennett-Coverley’s insistence on Jamaican vernacular, Marley also established and elaborated upon reggae’s idiomatic framework. Regarded primarily as a master of revolutionary lyrics, Marley could also reflect the nobility of the deprived, a deep sense of tragedy, historical memory retained from past realities, and a poignant understanding of victory, uncertainty, and failure.

No Woman No Cry, Exodus, Redemption Song, and Jammin’ certainly attest to the sensibilities above. Other songs, like Three Little Birds, Pimper’s Paradise, and Talkin’ Blues, encompass romance, satire, and rebellion. Marley was also adept at balancing the sacred and the secular, as in Time Will Tell and Babylon System. More than the Sunday worshipping elites, he understood the richness of religious ritual.

On the personal side, Marley’s example regarding success and its material trappings is noteworthy. He had no desire to show off his accomplishments. He never cared for designer fashion or a house on the hill, not even the BMW that some identify with him and his band. At a time when he certainly could have used connections to land a brand new ‘Bimmer’, Marley opted for a locally purchased second-hand car in reasonably good condition.

Marley waged a cultural war against spiritual and physical wickedness in high and low places. Like Cuban hero José Martí, Marley was a poet, humanist, and nationalist — an Africanist and an advocate for improving the socio-political conditions of the Jamaican people and the world’s oppressed.

Marley’s heroics are many. He overcame the class prejudice that wiped out many a bold soul in Jamaica, sending others (like Garvey and Roger Mais) scurrying elsewhere to continue the struggle. Marley provided work by establishing Tuff Gong Studios, the record manufacturing and distribution company. He helped many through financial assistance, setting up small businesses, and paying school fees and health costs.

He also took a bullet for all freedom-loving Jamaicans in an attempt on his life and on the lives of his wife Rita, members of his band, and the I-Three, his backup singers, because he supported the Smile Jamaica Concert, a show that was considered political. Instead of being overcome by fear or cancelling the concert, which he had agreed to do without charge, he summoned the strength and determination to perform for the multitudes that stood with him at Race Course, defying the forces that tried to silence him and, by extension, amplifying the voice of the Jamaican people.

Heroic, as well, is the sheer volume of Marley’s creative output. It is rivalled only by a few in the world of music for range, depth, and originality. Marley’s body of work contains invaluable texts that not only remind us of our history but offer therapy to minds suffering the residual effects of slavery and colonialism.

Acts of heroism are usually spontaneous, coming from an inner impulse. It means seizing the moment and going into action without regard to self-interest. Marley’s gesture at the One Love Peace Concert was such a moment, symbolic of the peace, unity, and freedom he sought for Jamaica. Bringing together two opposing political leaders, Edward Seaga and Michael Manley, Marley demonstrated his commitment to seeking the best for his country and his willingness, as a Rastaman, to participate in the political struggle.

Marley’s appearance at the Zimbabwe independence celebration in 1980 was another gesture toward world peace and equitable human coexistence. Not only did he appear free for his kin just emerging from a fierce war for independence, but he also absorbed the cost of re-routing his flight to avoid landing in South Africa, where blacks were still suffering under apartheid. Marley also flew in his own equipment for the show and when he learnt that thousands, including freedom fighters who had walked hundreds of miles, could not enter the stadium, he scheduled a free second show for the next day.

Not long after, he took the calculated risk of refusing to have his leg amputated, an act that may have halted the lethal spread of cancer through his body but would definitely have set back his mission to travel the world, spreading peace, hope, and love. In 1981, at a point near death, his body mere skin and bones, Marley requested that he be taken home to Jamaica to make his last stand with his Jamaican people.

How many of us questioning Marley’s dedication, sacrifices, and overall contribution to humanity have experienced life “in a government yard”? How many could withstand the daily realities of ghetto life or a day without food, water, or electricity? How many of us have seen the poor and given a helping hand, the unemployed without thinking of them as worthless? How many ran away during the 1970s instead of staying and tightening our belts in Jamaica? To Marley, however, all people were children of his (spiritual) father, hence his embrace of every demographic, class, race, and political persuasion.

For Jamaica to realise its full cultural, social, and spiritual potential, Marley, as the “head cornerstone”, would bring much-needed attention to our existing national heroes by exposing their contributions to a broader world.

As recently as January 6, 2024, Don Anderson’s Market Research Services Limited (MRSL) poll found that “Bob Marley was identified as the number one choice for the next national hero”. The most recent account of Marley’s global stature is the Paramount movi e Bob Marley: One Love. It’s a defining, life-threatening, life-changing, life-affirming, and life-ending period. Marley lived and died as a cultural, socio-political, and spiritual revolutionary whose advocacy and actions, with the vague possibility of Paul Robeson’s, were unsurpassed by anyone else in pop culture.

With his art and deeds, Marley encouraged us to perceive an epic, moving us from the plantation to adult suffrage to independence. Forty-three years after he transitioned into the ancestral realm, I firmly believe that the Honourable Robert Nesta ‘Bob’ Marley, O.M., ‘Gong’, ‘Skip’ has every conceivable qualification to justify the call for making him Jamaica’s eighth national hero.

I can just imagine Marley laughing at the idea, thinking nothing of my advocacy for his hero status; totally dismissing it, putting the emphasis instead on the uplift of Jamaicans in particular, and the world’s population in general. Personal endowments of this sort would neither have daunted him nor left Marley in awe. In my view, however, he would have accepted the honour on behalf of all the world’s people, particularly those for whom he is already a hero. I rest my case.

Herbie Miller is a sociomusicologist specialising in the social and cultural history of plantation life and the Black Diaspora.

This article was first published in Review: Literature and Arts of the Americas (Vol.43, Issue 2, 2010). The essay has been updated based on the success of the biopic Bob Marley: One Love, and because of a poll finding done in January 2024 by Don Anderson’s Market Research Services Limited (MRSL). The results indicated that Jamaicans want Bob Marley to become Jamaica’s next national hero, “with 44 per cent of respondents giving him their stamp of approval”. Part 1 was published last Sunday.