Marley's living musical legacy Keith Smith Friday, May 11th 2007

"So, if you're not too busy at 3.40 p.m. Friday, remember Marley,'' Nicholas St Bernard e-mailed me as he must have e-mailed a million others, reminding us that today marks 26 years since the passing of the "Masta Rasta...at age 36...'' Who is Nicholas St Bernard, you ask? Who, indeed? For a while there, I used to think that he must be the son, or at least related to Eric St Bernard of radio fame, Nicholas knowing more about local radio music programmes than just about anybody I know, "Nikko'' regularly writing things like: "I personally, first heard of his death, as a likkle yute (little youth) back in 1981, on Tuesday 12th May, while listening to "Projection 3'' with guest host, Eddison Carr. He played the live version of Bob Marley & The Wailers' "Exodus'' from the Babylon by Bus double album, and informed listeners that the brethren (Marley) died the day before (Monday 11th May), at 3.40 pm.....'' Listeners like myself back then, learnt Bob was born on February 6, 1945 in Jamaica, and had met his father twice. Bob Marley left to mourn his mother, his wife Rita, and children, Ziggy (David) and Stephen, among others.... Songs played during the tribute were "Trenchtown Rock,'' "No woman No Cry," "Exodus," "Three Little Birds," "I Shot the Sheriff," "Rat Race," "War," and the "live" versions of "Positive Vibrations" and "Lively Up Yourself." "Both Steveland Morris in 1980, on the track, "Master Blaster (Jammin')," and Sister Sledge paid tribute to the brethren. There were other tribute songs to Marley, almost immediately following his death. There was "Symphony of Love" by Patti Austin, a track from her 1981 Every Home Should Have One album. The year after Marley's death, 1982, Lord Melody (the late Fitzroy Alexander), sang on the reggae legend with the track, "Bob Marley", featured on his Brown Sugar album....'' Sweet serendipity. Without reference to any of this, one day this week I said to some young people: "What would I do to hear a new Bob Marley song now!" It was not that I had grown tired of the Marley music that there is. It is that like so many of the world I have long grieved over the fact that he died so young, presumably with so many songs still in him, Cindy Breakespeare, the Jamaican "Miss World'' who became his lover and mother of one of his children, recounting in one of the books written about him, how as they sat together at night he would break into song, only to forget the next morning both the melody and the lyrics - ganja having a way of doing that to you. "He would tell me,'' Cindy said, "you mean you didn't write down the words?'' Well, of course, she didn't and I remember her ruefully lamenting in the passage of the said book: "When I think of all those lovely songs just disappearing in the air.'' Interestingly enough, the young 'uns to whom I had expressed a yearning to hear a new Bob Marley song had an answer: "Then,'' they said, "you now have to listen to his children's,'' one of them rushing to tell me that the magazine Rolling Stone had described one of them - Stephen Marley, I think it was, or it must have been Damian - as "the best reggae singer of the decade.'' So now even as I write I am looking forward to playing for at least some part of today, songs from Damian's Welcome to Jamrock album including "Confrontation'' (now that title has a Marleyesque ring to it), "The Master Has Come Back'' (Jah, could that be what I think it will be?), "Road to Zion'' and, of course, his cover of "Pimper's Paradise'' from Bob's Uprising album which I remember hearing for the first time in Almond Drive, Morvant, Muhammad Shabazz and me exulting with the neighbourhood, Marley "hot on the box'', as Stevie Wonder had sung some time earlier. Also on today's playlist is Stephen's Mind Control album with the title song, "Officer Jimmy", "Chase Dem", "Let Her Dance'' among the others which again the young 'uns among you are certain to know and feel better than me. Still, I am going to keep an open mind, not really expecting that the junior Marleys would ever match their senior (How could they? Born or at least growing up in wealth how could they feel the pain of that Trench Town sufferer) but just to see how far did these fruits drop from the ackee tree.