UPDATE Bonus: Hit this link Exodus youtube to hear Exodus. And did you know Bob Marley wrote a song made famous by Eric Clapton? To listen to Marley's verison of I Shot the Sheriff go here - I Shot the Sheriff you tube
The headline above - the story - is at the end of my musings on Marley and his music ...
An interesting story to me since I lived in Jamaica from 1977 to '79, teaching there. Bob Marley was an incredible musical superstar. his album Exodus (came out in 1977, great album) was playing 24/7 all over the island. I actually attended, with future wife Brigid, the One Love Peace Concert, held in Kingston in April, 1978. And the album Legend which came out after his death at the age of 36 (cancer; an unusual melanoma) is far and away the all time best selling Reggae album.
Marley was a fascinating guy from a fascinating country. He liked children - had 11 by seven different mothers.
In April, 2005 we took the boys to Jamaica to show them where Brigid and I met and were married. We actually visited the Bob Marley Mausoleum near St. Ann's Bay on the north coast of Jamaica. To be honest, it was boring, but now I can say we were there. ... and the proof is these two pictures we took.
So here's the article about his conversion.
On November 4, 1980, in a New York City hotel room, Bob Marley was baptized as a Christian, but few chronicles of the star's life mention it.
While his interest in Scripture never faded, by late 1966, Marley slowly but surely began to immerse himself in the Rastafarian view of “Jah,” the Bible, and history. Rastafarianism—reduced in pop culture to cannabis and dreadlocks—rejected oppression and colonialism (“Babylon”) and embraced African heritage and history (“Zion”). And at the heart of the Rastafarian faith was the belief that Haile Selassie (or “Ras Tafari”), the Emperor of Ethiopia, was God incarnate and the second coming of Jesus.
In February of that year, Marley had married Rita Anderson, a Christian who converted to Rastafarianism that April when Selassie visited Jamaica. Marley eventually followed suit, joining the Twelve Tribes of Israel—known, as Dean MacNeil notes, as “the most ‘Christian’ and Bible-based sect of Rastafari.” He recorded his first Rastafarian-influenced song, “Selassie Is the Chapel,” in June 1968, followed by another, “Jah Is Mighty,” in 1970.
The decade of musical stardom that followed for Marley the Rastafarian is well known. But in 1980—three years after his initial cancer diagnosis, and just months before he died—Marley embarked on another, more hidden revolution. In the biography Catch a Fire, Timothy White notes that Marley had returned to Sloan-Kettering in New York after trips to Miami and Mexico. It was during that visit to New York, on November 4, 1980, that he was baptized. “Rita had Bob baptized in the Ethiopian Orthodox Church. …. Taking the name Berhane Selassie [“Light of the Trinity”], he had become a Christian Rasta.”
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Marley’s funeral was a thoroughly Christian celebration—further confirmation of his departure from Rastafarianism (which generally doesn’t observe funeral rites at all) and reception into the Orthodox Church. The Guardian offers an extensive summary of the entire event, also reflected in video footage online. Aside from the occasional nod to Rastafarianism, the event was deeply rooted in Christian song, readings, and prayer—all in a way that was respectful of the great themes of Marley’s life and work.
Wish I could find this t shirt again. Drawing behind me is a pen and ink by Brigid - tree on the south coast of Jamaica. She drew it while she was living in Jamaica, after she'd met me. Photo was taken a year or two after we got back from our 2005 Jamaica trip with the boys.
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