The first month of my freshman year in college, I borrowed Legend: The Best of Bob Marley and the Wailers from Adam Davis, a new friend from Wapello, Iowa, who lived down the hall from me. It went into a 3-disc CD changer in my dorm room and I believe it stayed in that position until I finally gave it back to Adam at the end of the semester, when I finally bought my own copy. The most reggae I had heard, up until that point, was whatever samples and homages were on Sublime’s self-titled album, which had come out the previous year. Legend, for me, opened the door to not only Bob Marley, but the music the rest of the world made outside the United States.
I started to buy Bob Marley albums, and then explore the works of other Jamaican musicians. I read a biography of Bob Marley (see below) and discovered a depth to the music, of activism, some mysticism, and the phenomenon of Rastafarianism in the 1960s and 1970s.
I’ve now been listening to Bob Marley’s music for 25+ years, and I don’t get tired of it. I don’t search out kids’ music to play for our little guy, because so much of Bob Marley’s music is accessible to kids. (Sick of “Baby Shark”? Try slipping in “Three Little Birds.”)
Throughout the years, I have continued to dive back into Bob Marley’s life and legacy, and I’ve long thought I might have enough recommendations to put together a Bob Marley-themed Friday Inspiration post. Since next Thursday (February 6) would have been Bob Marley’s 80th birthday, I’m doing it this week.
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When this documentary about Bob Marley came out in 2012, I went to the theater twice in one week to see it, and I think it’s probably still the best overview I’ve seen of his life, reggae, and Jamaican culture during his lifetime in 2 hours and 25 minutes. (video)
I love oral histories—I think they’re the closest we can get, in book form, to sitting in a room with a bunch of interesting people and listening to them talk about something. In the case of So Much Things to Say, they’re talking about Bob Marley, in a probably much more honest way than is shown in the Marley documentary. And there are so many wonderful moments in the book, told by the people who were there. My favorite line is probably Peter Tosh saying, “And three days later, the pope die!” and if you read it, I think you’ll get why.
Publisher’s book page | Bookshop (affiliate link) | public library
I can’t remember how I heard of A Brief History of Seven Killings back in 2015, but I was immediately enthralled by it, ripping through a paperback copy while kayaking across Lake Powell in December (I think I read 70 percent of the book while wearing gloves and lying in a sleeping bag). It’s not for everyone, as it’s a very violent historical fiction retelling of what happened to the seven people responsible for the attempted murder of Bob Marley in 1976. But the scale of the narrative is mind-blowing: 30-ish different narrators, each written in a distinct voice, by Jamaican author Marlon James. It won the Man Booker Prize in 2015, and like every book I’ve ever read that’s win or been shortlisted for the Booker Prize, it seems like as many people hate the book as love it. I love it.
Publisher’s book page | Bookshop (affiliate link) | public library
(If you do read (or have read) A Brief History of Seven Killings, I also loved this BBC documentary on YouTube about Marlon James, and his journey of growing up gay in Jamaica, coming out after moving to the U.S., and becoming a writer and professor.)
Is this a weird place to mention the sponsor of this newsletter, Precision Fuel and Hydration? Well, it’s fairly well-known that Bob Marley loved to exercise, mostly playing soccer in the mornings, and then taking his crew to stand under a waterfall, but he was also a runner (albeit maybe more likely to look to cannabis than electrolytes for performance enhancement?). Here’s this week’s link for 15% off at PFH.
Speaking of Bob Marley running, here’s a special SL-72 Bob Marley sneaker Adidas put out last fall, which is now only available on sneaker reselling sites, and quite unfortunately for me, over $300 in my size. (But probably a steal if you can fit into a US Men’s size 7)
Longtime music writer Timothy White’s 1983 book Catch a Fire was the first thing I ever read about Bob Marley’s life and career, probably 20+ years ago now. In chronicling Marley’s life, White explains so much about Jamaican culture and politics, and Rastafarianism, which deciphered many, many song lyrics for me.
Publisher’s book page | Bookshop (affiliate link) | public library
I owned several Bob Marley albums by the time I found the Songs of Freedom 4-CD box set in a music store in Iowa in 1998 or 1999, and although you can’t find a full version of it on streaming platforms (not sure why that is with box sets?), a couple different YouTube channels have re-created the tracklist in order. I go back to the early stuff often, and love how it shows Marley and the Wailers trying to find their voice, before they were a big deal, but obviously already knew how to write/perform great songs.
For some balance: the Disgraceland podcast did a great job of showing some of the less-than-savory aspects of Bob Marley’s life and career. He was an incredible, once-in-millennium artist, but as we all know, that doesn’t mean someone is a nice person all the time, or to everyone in his life.
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