By Kyermun Wesley (400 Level)
If he were alive he would have been 66 years old on February 6, 2011 but on the morning of May 11,1981 at the age of 36 he died at Cedars of Lebanon Hospital in Miami (now University of Miami). Since then the 11th of May has been marked and celebrated as Marley Day. On this day, many people emulated the way he dressed with dreadlocks hair style
and caps or don clothes that have touches of yellow, red and green put together.
Bob Marley as he is widely known and called was born into the family of Norval Sinclair a white Jamaican and Cedella Booker an Afro Jamaican. When Robert Marley was 10 years old, his father died of heart attack. In 1966, he got married to Rita Anderson and moved near his mum`s residence in Wilmington, Delaware in the United States. Marley though raised in the Catholic tradition, became captivated by Rastafarian religion beliefs in the 1960s when he was away from his mums influence. When he returned to Jamaica he began to wear his trademark dreadlocks.
Robert Nesta Marley was a song writer and musician and remains the most widely known and revered performer of reggae music. He is also credited with helping spread both Jamaican music and Rastafarian Movement, a monotheistic new religious movement that arose in the Christian culture in Jamaica in the 1930s. Many of its adherents
worship Hail Selassie 1 former Emperor of Ethiopia (1930-1974), as God incarnate, the second advent, or the reincarnation of Jesus.
Marley’s music was heavily influenced by the social issues of his homeland and he is considered to have given voice to the specific political and cultural nexus of Jamaica. His best known hits include: “I shot the sheriff”, “No woman No cry” which was the song that got
him international recognition, “Stir it up”, “Jamming”, “Redemption
Song”, One Love”, and together with the wailers, “Three Little Birds”, “Buffalo soldier”, and “Iron Lion Soldier”.
At the start of the European tour, Marley injured his toe playing football. In July 1977, he was found to have Lentiginous Melanoma, which is a kind of skin cancer observed on the palm , soles, under the nails and the mouth. Despite his illness, he wished to continue touring and was in the process of scheduling a world tour in the1980s. The band completed a major tour of Europe where they played their biggest concert to a hundred thousand people in Milan. After the tour Marley went to America where he performed two shows at Madison Square Garden as part of the uprising tour.
Shortly afterwards, his health deteriorated and he became very ill as the cancer had spread through out his body. The rest of the tour was cancelled and Marley sought treatment at the Bavarian Clinic of Josef Issel, where
he received a controversial type of cancer therapy partly based on avoidance of certain foods, drinks, and other substances. After fighting the cancer without success for eight months, Marley boarded a plane for his home in Jamaica.
However, his condition worsened in the course of the journey and was taken for immediate medical attention in Miami, Florida whereby died as the cancer was found to have spread to his lungs and brain.
A student of the University of Jos who was dressed like Bob Marley wearing, a cap colored Red, Yellow, and Green, Ibrahim Longs during the recent Marley Day, said he was celebrating the day because of Bob Marley`s bravery in facing the social issues of his homeland. He, however, described as regrettable the tendency of some youth to imitate the negative sides of the late star such as smoking of weeds and taking of drugs. Longs recalled that Marley`s final words to his son Ziggy Marley was that “money cannot buy life” so youths should not exposed themselves to danger by taking weed and drugs.
Marley received a state funeral in Jamaica on May 21, 1981, which combined elements of Ethiopian Orthodox and Rastafarian tradition.
