Bob Marley, One Love. Only the good die young. How do we measure legend? What are the yardsticks for love? How do you make a flawed human being into a hero? These are the questions that percolated in my mind after watching the 2024 movie, One Love.
My clearest memory of Bob Marley as a hero, and a legend, was on the day of his funeral, on Thursday, May 21, 1981, when I stood on the Rosemount Bridge in Linstead, St. Catherine in my St. Jago uniform and watched in amazement as a huge procession of people, made up of Rastafari men and women, Jamaicans from all walks of life, tourists and others,walked (while a few rode or drove) that leg of their journey towards his final resting place at his birthplace in Nine Miles, St. Ann. I had never been privileged to see Bob Marley perform. My family couldn’t afford to attend concerts or stage shows. But I’d already heard stories of this man and how important he was to our lives and our history in Jamaica. He was this special Rastafari man who had been making waves across the world with his music and his special, authentic style. Even then, I understood his import and the kind of resonance that his music had for people across the world, and for us, here at home. In Jamaica.
So, I watched the Bob Marley movie, One Love, on Friday, March 1 on my own. I didn’t want to be distracted by any of the kind of chitchat that we Jamaicans tend to engage in when watching a movie. I watched the movie with all my lenses cleared – just a Jamaican girl/woman from the working classes of St. Catherine, who had walked the trek from poverty and lack to my own version of success. The movie as constructed resonated with me terribly. I cried through most of it. I got it. I get it. An infallible human being does not exist. Heroes are human beings. Heroes do many things that we might think are not pristine and pure. But this biopic of Bob Marley clears away a lot of the overhanging and underlying variables, and projects him into our imagination as a risen hero. It also foregrounds what many of us knew read, heard and understood – that Nana Rita Marley was more than his wife and the mother of his children. She was his muse. She was his protector. She was what we call in Jamaica, his Muma, that woman of strength, who stands in the gap and exudes love, and nurtures and calms her man whenever he returns to the threshold of home. I had understood this for some time. Indeed, this understanding of Nana Rita Marley’s centrality to the Bob Marley that we know after his passing, is the reason why I took it upon myself as the then Director of the Institute of Caribbean Studies at the UWI, Mona Campus, to write the document that was sent forward to the UWI Senior Management Team to grant Nana Rita Marley what I know she deserved – an honorary doctorate from the University of the West Indies Mona Campus. I still have the document on my laptop. Nana Rita Marley is as much a legend as is Bob Marley, and One Love underscores this.
The conversations that have been floating around the Bob Marley One Love biopic have their time and place. These variegated discussions about the revolutionary lion, and the foregrounding of specific identities that are also important in his life’s journey. But as a reflection on Marley in a specific fashion, this biopic achieves its goal. I do not agree with the conversations around tampering with a timeline. It is clear that, in terms of using a cinematographic feature, the producers and directors of One Love decided to play timelines against each other for full effect and impact, and so past and present in Marley’s life were consistently juxtaposed. I was heartened to see on screen, Rastafari Elder Kumi (Mortimo Planno) of Rastafari legacy, whom I had been privileged to meet and to sit with as a part of my journey through the University of the West Indies Mona Campus. I cried copious tears seeing the rendition of Kumi on the big screen as Marley’s guide to and through Rastafari. I watched the events leading up to the 1978 One Love Peace Concert that my mother had read about to me from the newspapers and which I subsequently read about so many times; and watched in other forms of cinematography. I cried. The war-torn political climate that existed in Jamaica in the 1970s and into the 1980s was one that individuals like me lived through as a child going to school in Spanish Town, St. Catherine. The war-torn rivalries that many lives were lost to could not be mistaken for anything other than violent tribalism and, as a country, we bear those scars even today. I had read about Rita Marley’s being harmed during the shooting incident at Hope Road and eventually had the privilege of meeting Nana Rita. I was awed and humbled by her presence, and the aura of grace that she exuded.
No one can rob Bob Marley of his heroic status. Regardless of whether or not he was loved by many and loved many, what remains in my mind, is a legend and an icon whose music and expressions of love transcended any of what we could call his transgressions as a man. Ignore all the naysayers. Go and watch One Love. Ignore the conversations. Read the books that have been written about Bob Marley. Read all the books written by people who were close to him. Read the chapter by Allan “Skill” Cole in my book, Reggae from Yaad. Read Rita Marley’s book, No Woman No Cry. We understand that legends are created out of lives that are fractured, as people seek ways to rise and be better than their ordinary selves. I congratulate the Marley family, the team and the actors, as I had no issues with the tone, or with the accent of the actors and the actresses in this movie, and was gratified to see so many familiar faces of Jamaicans in this film. I was also gratified to see the names of several of my own students who worked in different capacities, as a part of this movie.
One Love, the biopic is a grand a tribute to a man who lived his life as a human being, who lived his life as a musician, as a Rastafarian, and who carved out for himself a pathway to excellence and iconic status. He left us with a legacy that has withstood the test of time, even as it has been stewarded by Nana Rita Marley and his family. Whether or not you expected it to be an explosive, revolutionary biopic of a lion who roars consistently, One Love renders to us a variation of the Bob Marley story that is authentic. He was a man who loved his family; loved his children; had conflicts internally; and shared the different parts of himself in different ways with many people. Watch the movie, enjoy it, and maybe, like me, you will shed many tears as you head towards what the producers and directors decided to do in the inevitable ending where they polarize Marley’s moment of ascension to the One Love Concert stage in 1978 with his declension or exit from the stage of life. Yes, I cried massive tears and was grateful for the historical archives that provided us with a snapshot of Bob Marley at that 1978 One Love Concert in real life, showing the moment when he invited the late former Prime Ministers, Michael Manley and Edward Seaga on stage in a show of unity. I looked at it and I said, “they’re all gone now, what legacies have they left behind for us in political culture, popular culture, culturally, musically, and for life in Jamaica?”.
I trust you will go and see the movie. I intend to watch it another time, with a group of people and I more than likely will shed more tears as I allow this portion of Jamaican life and history, and a story about a man who loved many and who is loved by many, to wash over me. One Love.
