The Life and Times of Bob Marley

He didn't stay long. Marley didn't like the pace of life in America, nor the circumscribed job opportunities available to black men. He missed his wife and home. While he'd been gone, though, something significant happened in Jamaica that would utterly transfigure Marley's life and destiny: A Living God had visited Marley's homeland and walked on its soil.

The living god's name was haile Selassie, the emperor of Ethiopia, and the product of a complicated strand of history that marked the lives of Marley and Jamaica. Selassie's importance for Jamaicans began in the life of another man, Marcus Garvey -- an early-twentieth-century activist who encouraged blacks to look to their African heritage and to create their own destinies apart from the ones imposed on them by America and by European colonialism. According to a persistent myth, Garvey instructed his followers in 1927 to look to Africa for the crowning of a black king, as a sign that a messiah was at hand. In point of fact, Garvey never uttered such a prophecy, but the claim remains attributed to him to this day. In 1930, when a young man named Ras Tafari maneuvered his way onto the throne of Ethiopia, the prophecy that Garvey never proclaimed took on the power of the word made flesh for many. Selassie was the Living God, the reinstatement of the rightful Jehovah to the earth and a beacon of hope for the world's long-suffering black diaspora.

In Jamaica, a cult called Ras Tafari sprang up around this belief in the 1930s. Rastafarianism developed as a mystical Judeo-Christian faith with a vision of Africa, in particular, Ethiopia, as the true Zion. The Rastafarians never had a true doctrine but rather a set of folk wisdoms and a worldview. One of their beliefs was that marijuana -- which the Rastas called ganja -- was a sacramental herb that brought its users into a deeper knowledge of themselves. More important, Rastas had an apocalyptic vision. They saw Western society as the modern kingdom of Babylon, corrupt and murderous and built on the suffering of the world's oppressed. Accordingly, Rastas believed that Babylon must fall -- though they would not themselves raise up arms to bring its end; violence belonged rightfully to God. Until Babylon fell, according to one legend, the Rastas would not cut their hair. They grew it long in a fearsome appearance called dreadlocks. The Rastas lived as a peaceful people who would not work in Babylon's economic system and would not vote for its politicians. Jamaican society, though, believed it saw a glimmer of revolt in the Rastas, and for decades they had been treated as the island's most despised population.

In 1966, while Marley was visiting his mother in Delaware, Selassie made an official state visit to Jamaica. He was met at the Kingston Airport by a crowd of 100,000. Rita Marley saw Selassie as his motorcade made its way through Kingston's streets, and when he passed by, she believed she saw the mark of a stigmata in his palm, signifying that he was God come to earth. After that, she adhered to the Rastafarians' belief system and ways of life, and she let her hair grow. When Marley next saw his wife, he said, "What happened to your hair?" He was put off by her sudden change. Indeed, one of the more interesting questions about Marley's life is just when exactly he too became a Rastafarian. According to some accounts, he adopted the religion soon after his return to Jamaica, as early as 1967 or 1968. But according to Timothy White's meticulous biography, Catch a Fire, Marley's conversion wasn't complete until the early Seventies.

This much, though, is certain: In the years that followed Selassie's visit to Kingston, Marley would not only grow into Rastafarianism but would also come to exemplify it. In turn, his faith would help Marley find new depths in his music. Rastafarianism -- and especially its beliefs in social justice, and its critique of the West's political, economic and class systems as a modern-day Babylon -- would play a key part in Bob Marley rising to meet his moment and to address the world he lived in.

[Excerpt From Issue 969 — March 10, 2005]