Title: Showcase: Bob Marley by David Burnett

Excerpt: David Burnett has published his first book, “Soul Rebel: An Intimate Portrait of Bob Marley in Jamaica and Beyond” (Insight Editions). It features the legendary reggae musician and his contemporaries, photographed first in Jamaica in 1976, then during Mr. Marley’s European tour in spring 1977.

Excerpt: Q: Now he is on more T-shirts than Che Guevara. Who was Bob Marley?


A: Bob Marley was born in the countryside up in Nine Mile but at an early age lived in Kingston. And Kingston was then — and still is — a pretty tough town and very polarized politically. Out of that turmoil and street violence came an amazing array of very poetic and sensitive music. He was a gifted poet who really understood the most basic things about human interaction. And this is what you feel in his songs.

Excerpt: Q: Is there a photograph that you think particularly captures Bob Marley?


A: In the book, there’s a double-page picture of a very close-up image of his eyes just looking at the camera, looking at me through the camera. And there is a lot of power in those eyes and a lot of wisdom.

Excerpt: Q: Did you get a contact high when you were with Bob Marley?


A: Well, I will say this: When you’re at the home of Bob Marley and he lights up a spliff, because that’s what he does, and he passes it around — your job is to be a very good guest. And I was a very good guest. I’m not sure my pictures got any better, but there’s always that hope.

Title: Learning from Bob Marley

Excerpt: There‘s little I‘ll tell you about Marley that you do not already know. Most of us grew up on Marley‘s songs; we‘re familiar with all the legend surrounding his death; and if we know nothing else about Jamaica, at least we know that‘s where Marley was from.

Excerpt: When I hear people say it‘s not how far, but how well, guys like Bob Marley, Jimi Hendrix and Elvis Presley quickly come to my mind. While Bob lived up to 36, Jimi was just 27 when he died in 1970. Yet he continues to be regarded as the greatest guitarist in the history of rock music. Elvis died at 42. All men were born into serious poverty and deprivation; suffered domestic instability and stood no chance whatsoever of making it big. Yet, they were able to shape the world and influence their generation within only a few years.

Excerpt: I admit, I‘m a Marley follower. Yes, I do not favour marijuana; I do not speak patois and I am not a Rasta man. But I am a student of Marleyism; same way I am a proud Felaist, Ghandist and Shakurist. And I think that you would be too, if you hate oppression, injustice and discrimination. Doubt me? Please listen to the following songs again: One love, Buffalo soldier, Redemption song, No woman no cry and Exodus. With the world the way it is today, we need to listen and learn from what this prophet said decades ago. We need to take time off all the so-called feel-good music and spend time pondering on all the stuff guys like Marley and Fela warned us about decades ago; that are still part of us, and leading us right into the gutter. If we dissect the lyrics carefully, maybe we‘ll find a solution to all these mistrust, turmoil, diseases, violence, meltdown and other cankerworms eating us all up?

Title: Ziggy Marley Responds to Buju Banton

Excerpt: Although the crowd at UWI reportedly applauded his remarks, they were not as well received outside the lecture hall. Jamaican media as well as radio shows and websites around the world have been flooded with outraged remarks from music critics and Bob Marley’s millions of fans. When asked for his thoughts on the matter, Ziggy laughed for a long time before speaking his mind.

Excerpt: “Me love my father, you know? And me love all of my elders and my heroes. And I would never say anything to put down any of them. From Bob to Toots to Peter [Tosh] to Bunny [Wailer]. I wouldn’t say anything to put down any of those guys. You understand? I lift up them. Those are our heroes. We lift them up. We don’t put them down.”

Excerpt: McGregor also blamed the media for blowing the controversy out of proportion. “This man spoke for almost an hour and a half, and for them to take one line and take it out of context and out of perspective, I was so hurt. He also talked about Bob’s sons and the affect on their music. They are not allowed to create and develop in their own way. People always compare them to their father. I know it’s frustrating for them. And other artists have suffered because they don’t come from that lineage. The industry has kept it like that. Still to this day major record labels don’t know how to market this music.”

Title: Island Records turns 50

Excerpt: There are three huge walls full of silver, gold and multiplatinum discs hung around the staircase that leads to the small, wood- panelled bar in Chris Blackwell’s Strawberry Hill hotel, 3,000ft up Jamaica’s Blue Mountains. U2, Bob Marley, Roxy Music, Grace Jones, Black Uhuru, Bob Dylan, Aswad and many, many more are all represented. But there’s one small picture — in fact, a copy of a picture — hanging behind the bar that means more to him than all the expensively framed awards combined. In the photograph, originally taken by Nathalie Delon, ex-wife of the actor Alain Delon, Blackwell, then just 33, sits next to Marley, his brightest, biggest star. Both men are laughing at some long-forgotten joke. It is the only image of the two alone together he has.

Excerpt: “Early on, I told Bob we would never have a picture taken,” he says as we shelter from the morning sun in his private garden set within the hotel’s grounds. “It was essential for what Bob represented that he had a black manager. Then one day, in Sept ember 1980, he turned up at my house in New York — he was with Cindy [Breakspeare, the Jamaican Miss World 1976] at the time — and there was a photographer present. Bob actually asked for a picture with me, and the guy took it. But my original was destroyed in a fire last year, and the photographer won’t give me a copy. He says it’s his pension. The really sad thing is, it was that very day that Bob told me he’d been diagnosed with cancer and had just six months to live.”

Marley died 28 years ago, in May 1981. “I loved him so very much,” he says. From the look on Blackwell’s face, it could have been yesterday.

Excerpt: Ten days later, Bob Marley — “the real thing” — who had been stranded while on tour in the UK, walked into Blackwell’s office. “Bob had incredible charisma,” Blackwell says. “When he walked in a room, you knew about it. I gave the band £4,000 to make a record. I came down to Jamaica a few months later and the band played me the Catch a Fire album. It was one of the high points of my life.”

Excerpt: “Island happened during a golden age of music,” he says, gathering up his things. “The truth is, I didn’t do anything. I was just in the right place at the right time. I only ever wanted to turn people on to new music, new things.” His assistant comes to chivvy him along. Blackwell smiles and says: “I’m just a borderline groupie who got lucky.”

Title: Marley's One Love tops Jamaica's best song list

Excerpt: Reggae legend Bob Marley's "One Love" topped a list of Jamaica's 100 best songs over 50 years that was unveiled on Tuesday by a panel of musicians and cultural officials associated with the University of the West Indies.

Excerpt: "One Love" recorded the highest score, 726 points, well ahead of the 540 points given to the second placed song, "O Carolina," which was originally recorded by the Folkes Brothers and redone by internationally acclaimed artist Shaggy.

Title: Ziggy Marley Remixing Dad's Classics For Kids

Excerpt: He'll follow that with the June release of a set of Bob Marley song's, revised and remastered with a children's audience in mind.

Excerpt: "It's a very different vibe," says Ziggy, "but still real Bob. It's not like fake Bob. It's still the real Bob...It's Bob singing and I'm playing, like an acoustic session almost. Anything I did on this record is soulful and musical. There's no gimmicks. I'm keeping true to the spirit of my father, to the spirit of his music."

Title: Tuff Gong makes reggae donation to National Library

Excerpt: Most of the items are recordings by reggae superstar Bob Marley who died in 1981. They include Legend, the posthumous compilation of his biggest hit songs, that has sold over 10 million units, and a copy of the Bob Marley Interviews which the singer did with Radio Jamaica broadcaster Neville Willoughby during the early 1970s.

Excerpt: Recordings by his sons Ziggy, Stephen and Damian and a DVD of the Marley charity event, Africa Unite, were also presented.

Title: Bob Marley - a true soldier

Excerpt: "People want to listen to a message, word from Jah. This could be passed through me or anybody. I am not a leader... The word of the songs, not the person, is what attracts people. I don't stand for the black man's side; I don’t stand for the white man's side. I stand for God's side. Every man gotta right to decide his own destiny.” Bob Marley.

Excerpt: Co-written by Marley and Noel G. Williams (also known as ‘King Sporty’) in 1978, Buffalo Soldier was developed after Marley read an article about African-American soldiers in the 1800s. The name ‘Buffalo Soldiers’ was given to the troops of the all-black 9th and 10th Cavalry regiments by their adversaries in the Indian wars in 1866.

Excerpt: “In America, the red Indians used to say the black people resembled buffalos because of their dreadlocks - so 'Buffalo Soldier, dreadlock rasta' - and the song is about them being 'stolen from Africa, brought to America, fighting on arrival, fighting for survival' about 400 years ago.” Paul Kelly, Bob Marley Foundation, Jamaica.

Title: Nigerian streets to be named for Bob Marley...

Excerpt: ABUJA (AFP) — Nigeria will re-name streets after music legends Fela Anikulapo-Kuti and Bob Marley, as well as Martin Luther King and Malcolm X, a minister said on Wednesday.
Names of some 80 streets in Nigeria's administrative capital are to be rebranded in coming days, some of them stripping off names of former military governors, the minister said.

Excerpt: "The occasion is to celebrate names which have contributed to Nigeria's democracy," he said.

Excerpt: Also honoured are the late right activist and African nationalist Marcus Garvey and the late king of reggae music Bob Marley because "they are an integral part of our history and consciousness".

Title: Bob Marley gets statue in hard-rocking Serbian village

Excerpt: Belgrade - An underdeveloped but hard-rocking Serbian village was set to reveal a sculpture to the Jamaican reggae icon Bob Marley on Saturday and so join others in the region already boasting or planning celebs-in-bronze.

Excerpt: The 2-metre-tall statute of the small musician who has had a huge impact on global music would acknowledge 'admiration for Marley's musical opus, as well as his contribution to freedom and equality,' organizers said on their site www.rockvillage.org.

Excerpt: Due to attend the festival and the ceremony are regional dignitaries from the world of music, including both performers as well as critics, in addition to 'friends' from Jamaica, Ghana and Suriname.

Title: Rochester student's artwork

Excerpt: "I was excited and really surprised" about having her art chosen, she said.

Bob Marley's song, "No Woman No Cry," inspired Rebholz to create her image of a girl weeping.

Excerpt: As part of the assignment on "linguistic exploration," Rebholz had to create a research workbook. Before she began her final work, she filled 38 pages with facts about Bob Marley and the Rastafarian movement, practice sketches, images of eyes and tears and reflections on the song.

"I annotated the song and wrote about what lines meant the most to me and how it made me feel," she said.

For example, she wrote: "Whenever I hear (the song), I picture a man putting his hand on a woman's shoulder telling her over and over, 'No woman, no cry,'" she wrote in the notebook. "I picture the man taking his hand and wiping off the tears."

Title: Marley Music Gets Kid Friendly

Excerpt: PBS Kids Sprout, the digital cable channel aimed at children, this week began running a campaign featuring a cover of Bob Marley's "Three Little Birds."

Excerpt: This is not the first time the Marley family has been involved in commercial ventures aimed at children said Ziggy Marley, one of Bob's children, and head of the Marley estate. "It's less about the regular marketing of things and more about the philosophy that kids have an open mind. From the marketing point of view, my father's music is kid friendly music," he said. Other Marley projects focused on children in the past have included books, and kid friendly films and TV shows such as Shark's Tales and Dora the Explorer as well charities such as Little Kids Rock and Unlimited Resources Giving Enlightenment.

Excerpt: "We've kind of realized we've been singing for all the older folks and maybe we should focus on the kids. Our brand is kid friendly and parents who love the Marley ideal teach their kids that philosophy," said Marley. "We've been doing this stuff for a while but we wanted to step it up a little. Our mission in life is to make a change in the world, we're not just here to grab some cash."

Title: One world, one love, one Bob Marley

Excerpt: He once reflected: "I don't have prejudice against himself. My father was a white and my mother was black. Them call me half-caste or whatever. Me don't dip on nobody's side. Me don't dip on the black man's side nor the white man's side. Me dip on God's side, the one who create me and cause me to come from black and white."

Excerpt: Bob's story is that of an archetype, which is why it continues to have such a powerful and ever-growing resonance: it embodies political repression, metaphysical and artistic insights, gangland warfare and various periods of mystical wilderness. And his audience continues to widen.

Excerpt: The Island of Jamaica has produced an artist who has transcended all categories, classes, and creeds through a combination of innate modesty and profound wisdom. Bob Marley, the Natural Mystic, may yet prove to be the most significant musical artist of the twentieth century.

Title: Students pay tribute to Bob Marley

Excerpt: The Caribbean Student Association collaborated with The Link to put on "One Love: A Tribute to Bob Marley" in Columbian Square Thursday night.

The tribute served to honor not only Marley, but also the spirit of black heritage and history through poetry readings and musical performances from both student and local groups.

Excerpt: As the event progressed, the audience quickly grew in size with the addition curious onlookers.

"We had a great turnout," White said after the show. "More than a hundred people showed up, and that's pretty much what we were going for, so I'm happy about that."

Title: Scorsese sings Bob Marley's praises

Excerpt: Martin Scorsese, Steve Bing's Shangri-La Entertainment and international sales agent Fortissimo Films will reteam for the helmer's next musically themed effort -- a yet-to-be-titled documentary about legendary reggae star Bob Marley.
Trio were behind the helmer's Rolling Stones docu "Shine a Light," which opened the Berlin Film Festival on Thursday. Tuff Gong Pictures and Shangri-La are producing the pic, which has been authorized by Marley's family. Docu is set for release on Feb. 6, 2010, on what would have been Marley's 65th birthday.

"I am thrilled that the Marley family will finally have the opportunity to document our father's legacy and are truly honored to have Mr. Scorsese guide the journey," son Ziggy Marley said.

Title: Bob Marley: A prophet without honour in his homeland

Excerpt: Miss Allison was born in London to a Jamaican mother and developed a love for reggae music - Marley's in particular - from early. "He has such a powerful message and spirit. I don't know anyone who really listened to his music and was not touched in some way," she said.

Excerpt: "I think it's very strange the way you guys celebrate the occasion here. To be honest, it's like you guys don't know what a legend really is. Back home, his birthday is like a huge carnival with street parades, Bob Marley rides and everything. It really is a great tourist attraction," she said.

Title: Bob Marley: More than a poster and a spliff

Excerpt: There's obviously more to it than that, but the fact that his dreadlocked semblance has now become a symbol standing for something much different than he actually intended places him in the league of appropriated heroes, somewhere amid Che Guevara, Marilyn Monroe and John Lennon. When once his music was the rallying cry of the oppressed Jamaicans who saw in him a revolutionary who would bring peace to a torn country, it's now the soundtrack to hazy bro-downs in just about every institution of higher learning in the world.

Excerpt: He spent the next few years as he'd spent much of the last: touring. It's estimated that Bob Marley was directly responsible for the livelihood of more than 6,000 displaced Jamaicans at his Hope Road residence, and the pressure of economically supporting them kept him on the road despite his diagnoses of cancer. Life on the road took its toll on him, but Marley had one more triumphant return to Jamaica left in him.

Excerpt: Furthermore, a lot of his ethnicity has been stripped from him. Reggae is still generally filed under the vague "world music" label, a category that Marley himself is largely responsible for creating. Worse, the urgency has also been stripped from his music. The image of Bob Marley in our world now is one of ganja and peace, love and acoustic guitar jams with your best bros. Where is the blood and suffering? The cries for burnin' and lootin' or revolution for all men?

Excerpt: Because Robert Nesta Marley is no longer with us, his name and image are entrusted to us to protect and his message to spread. So put down the bong, put on Catch A Fire and figure out how you're going to make a difference in the world.

Title: Roots, Rock, Remixed

Excerpt: Digging deeply into that sacred catalog, the dozen remixes of legendary songs on Roots, Rock, Remixed are taking the familiar and cherished and reintroducing it to sound systems worldwide. Roots, Rock, Remixed is slated for release on Quango/rockr music, July 24, 2007.

Excerpt: While some bootleg remixes of these songs exist, Roots, Rock, Remixed is the first remix album to receive a certified blessing from the Marley family and Chris Blackwell, himself, who stated, "Roots, Rock, Remixed retains the songs and the spirit of the original Wailers' recordings and creates a great dance party record."

Excerpt: "We're honored to work with such an important body of music," says Jeff Daniel, the album's co-producer and rockr music's chief. "Marley's sound was like no other and his indelible stamp can be heard all through these great new remixes. We took great care not to disrespect his legend."

Title: Marley Marketing Makes History

Excerpt: Island Records are to celebrate the 30th anniversary of Bob Marley’s ‘Exodus’ by releasing it on two pioneering new formats; on USB Memory Stick and Micro SD Memory Card.

Excerpt: The USB memory stick version will be limited to 4000 copies, produced in the Rastafarian colours of red, green and gold. It also contains three video tracks recorded at London’s Rainbow Theatre in June 1977.

Excerpt: The Micro SD Memory Card will also be made as a limited edition collectors’ item of 2000 copies. The Micro SD is a small, removable flash memory card – the size of a fingernail – that can be used in mobile phones, portable audio players and PCs.

Title: Marley makes Swiss teen's dreams come true

Excerpt: BOB Marley made 18-year-old Magalie Billod's dreams come true yesterday. The late Reggae icon passed away eight years before Magalie was born, yet yesterday he proved that he still has the power to make women happy.

Excerpt: Magalie wrote a letter to the foundation, explaining her passion for Marley's music and her desire to see Jamaica.
"I explained exactly what I wanted," Magalie told the Sunday Observer yesterday.

Excerpt: Within six months, Magalie, who suffers from Muscular Dystrophy, a genetic disease in which the muscles gradually weaken, got a phone call that her wish had been granted.
"I was very surprised and excited," Magalie said, her face lighting up as though she still had not gotten over that initial surprise - even though she was sitting in the cafe at the Jamaica Pegasus Hotel in Kingston.