Who Killed Bob Marley? Actor Roger Guenveur Smith asks a 'cultural question':

By Michael A Edwards Entertainment editor edwardsm@jamaicaobserver.com Friday, May 11, 2007

Twenty-six years ago today, Robert Nesta Marley died in a Miami hospital. For about eight months prior to that he had battled cancer, a disease which brought what many still feel is a premature end to one of the greatest careers in all of popular music.

En route to becoming the first Third World superstar, Marley helped to solidify the acceptance of Jamaican popular music as a global medium (a process which pre-dated his emergence but was surely catalysed by it) and forged a cultural identity that remains a major drawing card for the island to this day.

Roger Guenveur Smith (left) with director Spike Lee at the New York premier of A Huey P Newton Story.

It was somewhat less of an international draw in Marley's late-70s heyday, but it was powerful enough to attract a student by the name of Roger Guenveur Smith, who was then on a fellowship at Yale University.

"I came down to Jamaica around the time when Bob was recording the Survival album," Smith told Splash in a telephone interview from Los Angeles. "It was a very powerful experience meeting him, and that really began what for me is a really personal and deep connection to Jamaica."

That connection has proven powerful enough to see Smith returning on several occasions, most notably for the annual Calabash Literary Festival in Treasure Beach, St Elizabeth, which will be the staging ground for his latest one-man show, Who Killed Bob Marley?
Of course, given the actual turn of events, Smith's title raises obvious questions, but he said that he's going way beyond the historical fact. "For me, it's a cultural question, it's very personal. It has everything to do with how I identify myself with Jamaica, with music, as represented by Bob and the overall culture."

Those questions will be explored via the story of a suicidal poet who comes down for the literary festival with the intention of performing a piece referenced by the title. Like his searingly brilliant exploration of the life and soul of late Black Panther Party co-founder Huey P Newton (A Huey P Newton Story) the new show juxtaposes his spoken word passages with footage from his own experiences in Jamaica, not all of them pleasant.

"I had an encounter late one night going onto the Flat Bridge," he recalled. "I was driving and had some other persons in the car. I really wasn't familiar with the lay of the road and just as one of the passengers was calling out a warning, I found that we were going over." The vehicle did not actually enter the Rio Cobre, but it remained for Smith a harrowing experience and is included in the piece.

Jamaica also has a somewhat sombre, but sad memory in respect of his father, who accompanied the actor - part of the 'unofficial Spike Lee team' with roles in Lee features Do The Right Thing, Malcolm X and He Got Game among others - on his first visit and reading at Calabash, a partial gift for the elder's 80th birthday (he died in 2003).
For his appearance this year with the Bob Marley piece, Smith has brought along a special prop that also makes its way into the performance. "He had this blue hat that I'd bought him and he really loved it," Smith said. "And I thought I'd include it in this piece. It really brings everything together."

Smith will also be visible to Jamaican and international audiences via the currently in-production full-length feature, Better Must Come, the short version of which played at last year's Flashpoint Film Festival.
"I had had met Storm [the film's director] in LA years ago, and this is something we had talked about doing, and I'm very excited that it's now come to fruition," he said of the Firefly Films project, inspired - perhaps not coincidentally - by the socio-political turmoil of the late 1970s, a scenario in which Marley figured quite prominently.

Smith just completed an extensive LA run with Who Killed Bob Marley, a set of performances that have been well-received by critics and general audiences alike. In the meantime, he continues a somewhat established pattern of balancing smaller roles in larger films with his own projects and more independent features. He'll be seen later this year in the screen bio-pic American Gangster, and has also completed work on The Take alongside Tyrese and John Leguizamo.

But it's 'the natural mystic' and his music that remain his primary inspirations. "I remember him opening at the Apollo for Kurtis Blow and how he was trying to get that cross-fertilisation between reggae, r&b and hip hop, which itself was just coming up at the time," said Smith. "He was way ahead of his time, but his sons have carried on the process."

When asked if Marley's efforts have borne sufficient fruit, Smith replied: "The world has embraced Bob Marley. His music and the values in it still resonate with people all over the world and the world can still find what it needs in it."
In that, surely, is enough to keep 'The Gong' alive in the hearts and minds of many.