20 years after Marley's death, his legend grows

20 years after Marley's death, his legend grows

Trench Town, Jamaica, March 21: Twenty years after his death, Bob Marley's spirit, music and earthy magic reverberate in this Caribbean land of Rasta and reggae.

The ganja-smoking, dreadlocked Trench Town ghetto boy who carried Jamaica's roots music from Kingston's slums to the world has a hypnotic hold over his homeland despite his death from melanoma and brain cancer on May 11, 1981, at just 36.

While he remains the best-selling reggae artist in the world, Marley, to his legions of acolytes, was a humble musician renowned for his generosity who escaped poverty to become the Third World's first and perhaps only superstar.

"The greatest man I ever knew, greater than my father. He loved people more than himself," said Robert Gordon, 34, who was a street urchin washing car windshields when he met the reggae pioneer on a Kingston street corner in the early '70s.

"Bob was not just a musician or an entertainer or a father. Bob was a humanitarian. Bob was a king," said Gordon, who said he spent years of his youth at Marley's Hope Road compound. "Marley was a messenger of the people. There will never be another Bob Marley. He was a special gift to the world."

The child of a white father and black mother, Robert Nesta Marley was shunned by both sides in the tough streets of Kingston's Trench Town ghetto, a childhood that honed his empathy for the poor and downtrodden, those who knew him say.

"I think he's been a role model for the oppressed people around the world," Chris Blackwell, the record mogul who first took Marley to the world as a pop artist, told Reuters. "He's really taken that mantle quite naturally. It wasn't something he ever looked for. It just happened."

Jamaica today resonates with Marley. Thousands worship him as a missionary for Rastafari, the Caribbean religion that sees marijuana as a sacrament and the late Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie as a God. Strains of the reggae anthems "Rebel Music," "One Love" and "Redemption Song" emanate from every bar, restaurant and bare concrete shack in the ghetto.

"This music come from the people," Marley once said. "It carry Earth force."

Colorful portraits and murals adorn walls across the sprawling capital: Marley with Peter Tosh and Bunny Wailer; Marley bidding for an end to murderous political campaigning by uniting the hands of rivals Michael Manley and Edward Seaga onstage at the One Love Peace Concert in 1978.

His childhood is preserved at the Trench Town Culture Yard, a compound of metal-roofed shacks where he spent his formative years. A ganja plant greets visitors at the entrance and tour guides point out the tiny room and rusted bed frame of which Marley sang "We'll share the shelter of my single bed" in one of his most popular songs, "Is This Love."

Across town, at Hope Road, the walled estate where he moved when his records began to sell, fences gleam with red, green and gold Rasta colors and the aroma of ganja hangs in the Air. Pantry walls in the colonial manse bear neatly preserved bullet holes marking the time Marley was shot in December 1976 by a gang apparently bent on stopping him from playing partisan politics in the uneasy days leading up to national elections.

The mausoleum where Marley rests in his remote birthplace, Nine Mile in Northern Jamaica, is a favorite pilgrimage for tourists. Vigilant but friendly Rastas keep watch.

"He is the biggest reason people come to Jamaica. It used to be sea and sun," said Eleanor Wint, a director of the Bob Marley Foundation. "If you say Jamaica, it means Bob Marley. If you say Bob Marley, it means Jamaica.

Abroad, Marley's legend seems only to grow with passing years. From tiny Rasta villages scattered through the Caribbean islands to guerrilla strongholds in Africa and South America, he is an icon of rebellion.

"Marley's music has touched more people in more places more deeply than any artist in the 20th century," said Roger Steffens, a reggae historian who hails Marley as perhaps the century's greatest musician. "He transcends music in a way that Lennon or Dylan never have."

He remains the top selling reggae artist. In the past ten years 4.6 million copies of his albums were sold in the United States, 778,000 in 2000 alone, according to SoundScan, a record sales organisation. By comparison, Burning Spear sold 49,000 last year, Jimmy Cliff 85,000.

"He had an inspired gift of natural poetry. A lot of his music was channeled," Steffens said. "He wouldn't sit down with the pencil and paper and try to polish lyrics. His music very often came to him fully formed."

Those who knew him say he was also gifted with a natural humility and generosity unheard of in pop music. Legend has it that he once supported some 6,000 poor Jamaicans with food, money and other help doled out from his Hope Road estate.

Two decades after his death, Trench Town remains a blighted inner-city neighborhood despite redevelopment efforts.

"I can't say that it's gotten better. All of our inner city communities have not seen the growth we would have hoped for," Wint said. "It's very disappointing because that's what Bob was striving for."

Today, politicians, musicians and common folk debate whether Marley should be enshrined at National Heroes Park. Jamaica has only seven National Heroes, including the political greats Norman Manley, regarded as the Father of Independent Jamaica, Alexander Bustamente, the first Prime minister, and black nationalist Marcus Garvey, Marley's inspiration.

Naysayers argue Marley's advocacy of ganja use -- although universally accepted in Jamaica and a sacrament in the Rastafarian faith, it is still officially illegal -- and brief references to violence in his music weigh against him.

But of the two current candidates for National Hero, Marleyand the late Prime Minister Michael Manley, a figure of enormous stature in the Third World, the reggae legend is often considered the most likely to succeed.

"This music called to the people of the world," said Barbara Glouden, a well-known journalist and radio host. "It was used in every front-line act of defiance."

But she argues for caution, saying Marley's staying power needs proving. "I think that national heroes cannot be made in a hurry. It is not just the person you are enshrining, it is the quality of the work. It has to stand the test of time."

Kingston shopkeeper Trevor Henry, whose small store carries Marley songbooks, trinkets and Rasta-colored banners reading "Positive Vibes" and "Question Authority," says Marley is a genuine hero.

"Twenty years after his death, his music still has an impact. His message is still there. Good clean lyrics. In terms of uplifting the minds of the people, he is a national hero."