Its radical ideas were carried by radio into every home and soon Rastafari permeated the society. Soon, more and more of Jamaica’s top musicians became Rastas, and reggae, the dominant music of Jamaica, became the main vehicle of expression for the Rastafari movement. Marcus Garvey said that a people without knowledge of their past is like a tree without roots.” Our home is Timbuktu, Ethiopia, Africa where we enjoyed a rich civilization long before the coming of the European. “In my music I and I want people to see themselves,” he said. His songs were designed both to tell history and to instill pride and hope in a pebple indoctrinated with the lie of inferiority. Inspired by the back-to-Africa beliefs of Rastafari, Marley took a deep interest in Africa and the slave trade and wrote some of the most devastating statements of black rage ever recorded. His only comment when asked about his success was, “The man who does his work well, he shall be rewarded.”ĭuring the late ’60s the Wailers became the first popular Jamaican group to make Rastafari philosophies and Rasta drumming the main thrusts of their music. Two albums, Rastaman Vibrations and Uprising, made gold in the U.S. They all went gold 500,000 copies sold within the first year in England, Europe and Canada. Marley, who wrote his songs and arranged his music, made 10 albums with Island. Eric Clapton had a big hit with Marley’s “I Shot the Sheriff,” Johnny Nash scored with Marley’s “Stir It Up” and “Guava Jelly.” In 1972 Marley and the Wailers signed with Island Records, a small London-based company headed by Chris Blackwell, a white Jamaican. Marley came to be widely respected as a songwriter with a reach that was broad and deep. Soon the world discovered that Marley was no ordinary singer whose words were designed to be hummed for moments and forgotten here was a messenger whose lyrics call attention to our condition, to the reasons for suffering: The music brings lightness to the feet and makes them dance, but the beat is a marching drum, a call to struggle: “Get up, stand up,/Stand up for your rights,/Get up, stand up,/Don’t give up the fight.” Because I and I no compromise I and I music, I’m one of dem tough ones,” Marley said. There is nothing I ever do that goes away in the wind. From the beginning Marley strove to convey meaningful content in his lyrics: “Nothing I do is in vain. Stubborn, no obey no one but we had qualities and we were good to one another.” In 1964 Marley, Peter Tosh, and Bunny Wailer formed the Wailing Wailers. Me just grow in a de ghetto with de youth. Me no have no parent fe have no big influence pon me. “Me grow stubborn, you know,” he recalled when we talked. A helter-skelter music industry was just developing in Kingston where the unemployment rate was 35 per cent and Marley scuffed out a living as a welder. Marley recorded his first song, “Judge Not,” in 1961 he was 16 years old then. Tonight he will talk with me about Rastafari tomorrow he will go up to Harlem’s Apollo Theater and make more history, more legend. Lying casually across the bed he carefully thumbed through a Bible. Marley got up, and politely took leave of the jolly group. Still, I found it hard to reconcile the slightly built, denim-clad man with the explosive entertainer who danced across the stages of huge arenas or penetrated me with his stare from the cover of Rolling Stone. I had read about the millions of records Marley sold worldwide and that he was a multimillionaire. his words still sustain and warn and fulfill. He blended so snugly with his peers that I could never have picked him out had his face not decorated record jackets, T-shirts, and posters everywhere. His laughter was uproarious, unpretentious, and free. He did not overshadow or separate himself from the dozen or so Rastamen milling about his Essex House suite. During his lifetime this man had become a mythical figure, yet nothing in his easygoing manner identified a superstar. He sat with his friends smoking and rapping.