One love: several loves and a Missed World
IN IRELAND, where Bob Marley’s father came from, the word means a close friend, an ally, or at the risk of offending my Jamaican friends, a good buddy who has your back. However, in Jamaica, unless it is preceded by the word team or class, ‘mate’ is a pejorative, denoting a paramour who feels that he or she has competitive rights.
Having paid attention to the furore surrounding the One Love movie, I really did not want to bend arrows, twist bows, and certainly, not break spears.
In many ways, the issues surrounding the clinical omission of Cindy Breakspeare, 1976 Miss World, mother of Damian ‘Junior Gong’ Marley, touches the larger topic of how Marley was perceived, his fame, his acceptability outside of the black world, and certainly, the status of black women with strong African features. The first time I looked at a picture of Cedella Booker, Bob’s mother, I thought that maybe the DNA was active and affected by environmental factors. Am I the only one who thinks that she and Alfarita ‘Rita’ Marley, Bob’s widow, bear a striking resemblance.
The story relating to the departure of the Elder Marley is not very clear and might be the subject of another conversation. However, despite Booker being his legal wife, there is nothing regarding his material heritage or legacy that Bob seemed to have inherited. Hold on; but he did! Bob was clearly a hybrid, like Sean Paul later on, and Shaggy, and he did not have to climb the almost insurmountable talent hurdle that African phenotype Peter Tosh could not and Shabba Ranks (Rexton Gordon) did against great odds.
NO BETTER SINGER
Call a black card a spade! As great as Marley was, he certainly was no better a singer or writer than Tosh or Bunny Wailer, the other members of the Wailing Wailers, and doubtless, he lacked Tosh’s musical genius. Nonetheless, because of his more amiable personality, charisma, and, possibly, his African features were not as distinct as his mother or his wife, he became the front man of the group. In more ways than 10, he played this role to its logical perfection.
Importantly, Marley kept his ‘til death do us part’ vows with Rita, and she kept them beyond the grave as well. Nevertheless, the ugly truth is that unlike Shabba, young Gordons or ‘Junior Ranks’ are not popping up from every continent except Antarctica.
Now, this is not an attempt to moralise about Marley’s ethical standards or behaviour. He is not an outlier among Jamaicans - men and women. Remember, this is the world capital of misplaced fatherhood among men who study for DNA tests but fail miserably. Answer one simple question: Apart from her dominantly European appearance, and Miss World title, what makes Cindy any more special than the myriad baby mothers?
True, she might be the woman who loved him the most, but this is no Camilla or Wallis Simpson, who played good games of checkers, huffed the Queen, and gained the King. Rita held her ground and never abdicated her throne.
Marley’s name is a birthright, and the children justifiably exploit it even if some are talent-free. After all, which of them honestly would get a pickup or a small van, much less a ‘big bus’ were they not Bob’s kids? This is not track and field, where the individual has to earn his medals on the track. Anyone remembers Todd Henry, who did a remarkable song titled Walk With Love?
This 1982 song, for the better part of a year, touched the heart of many Jamaicans and others who were dying to find someone to fill the vocal gap left by Marley. Despite the similarity, he was not a Marley and is as known now as John Mouse, who sounded like Coco Tea.
EQUAL RIGHTS
Like the other 80 per cent of Jamaicans born outside of wedlock, I am very thankful that the 1975 Status of Children Act gives equal rights to every single child. After all, it is impossible for an offspring to be his father’s half-son. Yet, having rubbed shoulders with lawyers over the years, there is nothing special in law for a mother of an adult child, irrespective of her external stature, unless of course, she has a ring, separate from ‘suffer-ring’ or any such composite word.
Unlike Shabba, whose Michiboo, and he raised a nuclear family with no cached children, Marley left the door open to the challenge of intestacy. Interestingly, given my Latin language background and his mating record, I can be forgiven for originally thinking that ‘intestate’ meant something else.
Let me make this clear!Although the norm of the Old Testament, Marley’s polyamorous behaviour and literally sowing of wild oats are not African retentions. Anyone who sat outside my Introduction to Sociology classes here or in the USA knows that polygamy involves the first spouse approving of the others.
In many ways, Rita is a heroine. Biting her lips and closing her eyes, in 1978, she recorded Play Play. Yet she wisely had a view of the larger picture even as many of Bob’s friends referred to her as ‘Richer’ Marley. This matriarch was securing the legacy of her children, and unlike many other women in her position, she did not disenfranchise the other progenies. After all, children are always innocent.
Doubtless, Cindy has a story to tell, and so do all the others. However, this is the story of Bob and Rita, and perhaps mockingly, the title is One Love. As wife and matriarch, she has the best hold on the legacy of Bob, and inasmuch as the queen rebels, Shabba would affirm that Rita has a firm grip and cannot buckshuffle.
In the game of soccer, Bob’s favourite sport, the scoreline mean that despite the margin, all three points go to Rita.