Four decades after his death from cancer, Bob Marley is still the world’s most famous and beloved reggae artist. The revolutionary Jamaican singer’s captivating visage and crown of cascading dreadlocks can be found on T-shirts, murals and dorm-room posters wherever you go. Though Marley travelled the world, romanced Miss World (and at least one princess!) and transcended class, race and religion, he found joy in simple and spiritual pursuits – smoking marijuana, which Rastafarians consider a sacrament – sea baths and afternoon soccer games with his crew.
But for music enthusiasts and fans enamoured of the anti-establishment stance embodied in his Rastafarian religion, a pilgrimage through the vibrant culture, lush landscapes and rhythmic beats of the island that birthed the cultural icon is the best way to uncover his essence.
Begin in Nine Mile, Marley’s rural birthplace and burial site in St. Ann’s parish, where his Black teenage mom, Cedella Malcolm, married Norval Marley, a four-decades older white plantation supervisor. It’s a winding journey along narrow roads and up through breathtaking scenery to reach the serenity of the mountains evoked in the languid spirituality of Marley tunes like Sun is Shining and Natural Mystic. Rastafarian guides, often Marley’s relatives, share tales of his early years and their views of his prophetism.
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Next stop is Western Kingston, where Marley’s mother moved with her young son to the public housing projects in Trench Town after Norval abandoned them. Their hardscrabble existence, reflected in the song No Woman No Cry, gave rise to the rebellious creative music and spirit that would come to define both Marley and the nation he called home. Living cheek-by-jowl in modest rooms that now comprise a museum showcasing personal artifacts, photographs and memorabilia, this is where Marley learned to play guitar; formed the Wailers with Bunny Wailer and Peter Tosh; and met his wife, Rita Anderson, who would later form his backing vocalists known as the I-Threes with Marcia Griffiths and Judy Mowatt. The group’s breakthrough 1974 album Catch A Fire, which is enjoying a 50th-anniversary reissue, was conceived in this gritty locale.
By the mid-’70s, Marley – who had exploded in popularity around the globe – was living less than a dozen miles, but a class-difference away, at 56 Hope Rd. in upscale New Kingston. The home, just down the street from the prime minister’s mansion, was acquired from his Island Records label boss, Chris Blackwell; this is where iconic tunes like Redemption Song and One Love were recorded. It is now the Bob Marley Museum, which offers tours of the house and nearby Tuff Gong International recording studio, where the instruments and equipment that shaped the sound of reggae are preserved.
The Hope Road house figures prominently in the biopic Bob Marley: One Love, which hits theatres on Valentine’s Day. Marley’s children and widow have partnered with Brad Pitt’s production company, Plan B Entertainment, to produce the movie, which focuses on a period of political strife when Marley survived a gunman’s bullet in 1976. The attempted assassination at 56 Hope Rd., which was a pivotal time for Marley and the country, was also captured in Jamaican writer Marlon James’ 2015 Booker Prize-winning novel, A Brief History of Seven Killings.
As he nursed his physical wounds and the psychological trauma of being targeted by his own countrymen, Marley found respite at another Blackwell property, Strawberry Hill, just 30 minutes away in the misty Blue Mountain region, where the famed coffee is grown. Now a luxurious spa and resort offering hiking tours, waterfall escapes and a delectable Sunday brunch, it was the first boutique hotel in Blackwell’s Island Outpost chain. End your visit at the Rastafari Indigenous Village near Montego Bay to learn about Ital cuisine (all natural and vegan) and the holistic and cultural principles that guided Marley’s life and music, which are embedded in Jamaica’s soul and soil.
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Ziggy Marley was just 12 when his father succumbed to cancer in 1981, but some memories of his Jamaican childhood with the reggae star are indelible. Like the night seven gunmen burst into their home at 56 Hope Rd. in Kingston, injuring the entertainer and three others, including Ziggy’s mother, Rita Marley.
“It was like shell shock,” Ziggy said in a recent phone interview from his L.A. home, about the night in 1976 when police whisked the eight-year-old and his siblings away from another house where they were staying. “I remember those experiences of what happened the night of the assassination [attempt]; when we got picked up and went to where my father was hiding out. It’s very vivid memories, but we look back on them like a frickin’ movie.”
Now Ziggy, a producer on the biopic Bob Marley: One Love – which stars Kingsley Ben-Adir as Bob and Lashana Lynch, the first female 007 (in the latest Bond film, No Time to Die), as Rita – is reliving that night, and that volatile period in Jamaica’s history, frame by frame. “In movie terms, this is a very entertaining part of Bob’s life,” said Ziggy, who was a constant on the movie sets in London (where Bob went into self-imposed exile after he was shot) and several Jamaican locations. “In personal terms, it’s a very life-changing experience that he was going through, where, at some point in this journey, he decided that his life is not for him, it’s for people. And this was the period of time where he came to that realization.”
Bob’s key tenets set an example for Ziggy, his eldest son, and Bob’s 10 other children. “Discipline and hard work and respect for the music and the purpose of the music,” Ziggy outlined. “Music has to be your lifestyle; it can’t be something that you just do. We learned that from a young age.”
Some of Bob’s kids have followed in their father’s footsteps and become, like Ziggy, Grammy-winning artists. The next generation also has music in their blood, including Ziggy’s 16-year-old son, Gideon, who sings and plays the guitar, and was a drum tech on his dad’s 2023 tour. But Ziggy pushes back on the suggestion the Marley legacy is a family entertainment business that he and his siblings, or Bob’s “hundreds” of grandkids and great-grandkids, are conditioned or entitled to join.
“I have a different kind of concept,” he explained. “If you have something in your heart, then you can speak it, but if you’re going to do it just because of your name, then it’s a different thing. The family business is really a business of how you treat other human beings. Music is one way we express that, but our business is humanity.” The Marley name, which is stamped on everything from coffee to musical instruments, is also attached to philanthropic work through the Bob Marley Foundation, like educational scholarships, hospital equipment and support of the Reggae Girlz, Jamaica’s national women’s soccer team.
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Although Ziggy acknowledged the film will undoubtedly attract more visitors to locations like 56 Hope Rd. (where a replica of the house was built near the original) and Bull Bay (16 kilometres east of Kingston, where Bob used to jog on the beach), he said it will show “the real side of Jamaica.”
He is proud that One Love was partly filmed in Trench Town, the Kingston tenement where he was born and where his dad came of age, and that residents were tapped to work in front of the cameras and behind the scenes. “It kind of uplifted the community, not only in a material way, but in a very spiritual way also. Trench Town is a tourist attraction now, and will be more after this film. We used to play around there, so we have friends still in the community. I tell them: ‘Listen, Bob is doing this, it’s not me. This is Bob still helping out Trench Town.’”