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Jamaicans Get Together, Don’t Feel All Right About Bob Marley

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Times Staff Writer

Mingling with the pungent wafts of ganja smoke and the bobbing pulse of Jamaica’s surrogate national anthem, “One Love,” a jarring note of discord is messing with the mellow vibe of this remote village.

Here in the Dry Harbor Mountains lie the remains of reggae legend Bob Marley, and those who come to honor his memory insist it is here he must stay.

Nearly 24 years after his death from cancer, Marley’s remains have become the subject of an international family feud and intellectual debate over whether he belongs to the world, the Rastafarian religion or his impoverished homeland.

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Rita Marley, the late superstar’s widow, outraged Jamaicans when she announced last month from Ethiopia that she planned to relocate Marley’s remains to Shashemene, the land given to Rastafarians by the country’s last emperor and revered deity, Haile Selassie.

“It was Bob’s dream, and the family shares that dream,” the widow told a news agency in Addis Ababa, the Ethiopian capital. A few days later, she backed off from a pledge to relocate his crypt in time for the celebration of what would have been his 60th birthday today.

But radio talk shows are still sizzling with Jamaicans’ fury at the prospect of losing their most famous cultural icon and the tourism revenue he generates from the grave. Those who tend Marley’s mausoleum have vowed to physically block any disinterment, and fans warn such an effort could lead to bloodshed.

“He’s our legend. If anyone tried to move him, it would cause a riot,” said Bull Dailey, who shuttles tourists here from the coastal resorts around St. Ann’s Bay.

He isn’t exaggerating how much Marley means to Jamaicans. Images of the dreadlocked singer appear everywhere in the country: on the walls of Kingston’s stateliest hotels, on rolling papers and lighters, on thousands of T-shirts and beach towels.

Angry vows to thwart relocation -- including one radio caller’s comment that Rita Marley should be stoned -- have upset and divided the late musician’s family.

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“Jamaicans are turning this into something like a war, which makes we wonder whether his words were really heard by the people,” said Sharon Marley, the eldest of Marley’s 12 known children and the first of four he had with Rita. “Just to hear how people are carrying on in this country -- the ‘one love’ he preached and the unity he preached not being remembered -- it makes me very sad.”

Sharon Marley and her siblings left Jamaica on Wednesday for Ethiopia, where they planned to join Rita Marley in a monthlong tribute to the late reggae star, who was a devout believer in the Rastafarian religion that embraces peace, love and nature and uses marijuana as a sacramental aid for meditation.

“The family hasn’t sat down and talked about this yet,” Marley’s first-born said of the reburial issue. “It was just a suggestion. There’s nothing positive yet. And it’s not going to be a decision made by one person. It must be a family decision, and we as a family have always worked together.”

Marley’s mother, 78-year-old Cedella Marley Booker, also traveled to Ethiopia for the “Africa Unite” commemoration, a series of concerts and performances that is scheduled to be broadcast throughout Africa. Before she left, Mother B, as she’s known, told Jamaica’s RJR talk radio that she opposed removing her son’s remains from their resting place here in Nine Mile, the town where she still owns a guesthouse and visits often from her home in Miami.

And Marley’s uncle, Lloyd Malcolm, who grows coffee, fruit and marijuana on a neighboring plantation, warned that the town would be devastated without its role as the shrine to his nephew.

The humble clusters of tin-roofed houses that flank a narrow road traversing the verdant hills testify to the relative prosperity that Marley’s memory bequeaths to the place of his birth. Guesthouses for overnight visitors, eateries peddling vegetarian patties by the roadside, the Stephney All-Age School that Marley attended as a boy all benefit from the brisk traffic. Proceeds from the mausoleum and gift shop support the local community, and nearly everyone within a few miles of the site depends on the musician’s memory for a living.

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“It’s not gonna happen,” said Jonathan “Fuzzy” Braham, who grew up with Marley. Braham and half a dozen other locals lead visitors on tours of the hilltop mausoleum and the one-room hut where Marley spent his boyhood, pointing out the rock on which the musician sat as he toked and composed his earliest music. “He’s not going anywhere. His mother, the government of Jamaica, everybody -- the whole world is against that. Rita, she’s just talking,” Braham said.

Fans, both Jamaican and foreign, tend to agree.

“This is his birthplace. His roots are here,” said Jeff Priestley visiting from Winnipeg, Canada. “I’ve been coming to Jamaica for years and I’m a big reggae fan, but I never came here before. What forced us to come this time was the possibility he might leave.”

Rhea Gayle, a 12-year-old from the town of Negril, said her teacher made the issue of Marley’s burial site and his place in Jamaican history a topic for classroom debate. “He represents an important aspect of our culture,” she said. “I think he should be made a national hero because he played a bigger part in our history than anyone else.”

A proposal to bestow that designation on the late star recently made its way to Parliament, but no decision is imminent, certainly not before this month’s extended 60th birthday celebrations, Information Minister Burchell Whiteman said.

Jamaican officials have not received a formal request to relocate Marley’s remains and won’t speculate on what position the government might take if such a request were made, Whiteman said.

“But the majority opinion in this country is certainly that Bob Marley’s remains should rest in the country of his birth,” he said. “And we as a government have to be responsive to the wishes of the majority.”

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Born Robert Nesta Marley on Feb. 6, 1945, Marley grew up with his mother’s close-knit clan in these fertile mountains after his white, Scottish-born father abandoned the family. Still in his teens, he moved to the Kingston slum known as Trenchtown, immortalized in one of his earliest songs.

Taken under the wing of Island Records founder Chris Blackwell, whose talent-spotting put reggae on the international map, Marley soared to fame with his group The Wailers, recording 1970s hits like “I Shot the Sheriff,” “No Woman No Cry” and “Exodus,” earning accolades as one of the most influential artists of the 20th century.

Jamaican media point to his superstar status and his being synonymous with Jamaica as argument enough to keep him in his homeland. In an editorial a day after Rita Marley broached the subject of reburial, the daily Jamaica Gleaner recalled the national outpouring of grief that surrounded the return of Marley’s body from Miami, where he died May 11, 1981, at 36 en route to his homeland after months of unsuccessful cancer treatment at a German clinic.

“To relocate Bob Marley’s body would be to take away an irreplaceable piece of Jamaica, as well as insult the many who have contributed to his success and worldwide fame,” the country’s most influential newspaper asserted.

But Carolyn Cooper, head of reggae studies at the University of the West Indies, said Marley himself could have supported the move. As a devout Rastafarian, he might have been committed to returning to Africa to rest with “the father,” Selassie, Cooper said.

“Repatriation -- return to the ancestral continent -- is a central philosophy of African culture. When Selassie set up Shashemene, it became a kind of symbolic space for Rastafarians. But,” she added, “I don’t know if Bob wanted to be buried there. I’m a little suspicious, as we hadn’t heard that until now.”

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Still, she argued, taking Marley’s remains to Ethiopia wouldn’t make him any less of a cultural hero to Jamaicans.

Barbara Gloudon, a popular radio talk-show host, contended that Jamaicans were dragging down his legacy by making it an argument over possession of decomposed remains instead of his enduring spirit. It makes no real difference to his place in cultural history where he is buried, she said.

“It’s an allegory for the times we’re living in,” she said of the burial dispute. “The music industry has become soulless.... It’s upsetting to see what was a psychic legacy that we kept in our hearts being dragged around and reduced to a handful of bones and a pile of dust.”

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