One love: where the reggae never stops

Forty years after singer Bob Marley’s death, his legacy is thriving. Nigel Tisdall heads for Jamaica to get a sense of the man himself

This weekend a new musical devoted to the life and songs of Bob Marley opens in London’s West End. Directed by Clint Dyer and written by Lee Hall, Get Up, Stand Up! celebrates the enduring appeal of the Jamaican singer-songwriter whose romantic and rebellious lyrics have become a part of daily life. Forty years after his death from cancer at the age of 36, the reggae star has more than 66 million Facebook followers, while One Love has become a global anthem.

Marley has also been a major influence in attracting travellers to his homeland, a stunning union of forestcloaked mountains, golden beaches and charismatic people at the heart of the Caribbean. But where should you go to get a sense of the man and the landscapes and experiences that inspired his powerful songs that slip so easily between the tender and the outraged?

I start my search with a soft landing at Strawberry Hill, a heritage hotel perched 3,100ft up in the Blue Mountains with a winning view to the glittering lights of the capital, Kingston. Opened in 1994 by Chris Blackwell, the Jamaican record producer who brought Bob Marley and The Wailers to the world’s attention, it includes a Gold Room filled with awards given to his company, Island Records. Eleven of these are for Marley and his band, including some rather sweet “multi-platinum” cassettes. Fans can also book Gong, a cottage room with themed wooden fretwork that references his “Tuff Gong” nickname.

Strawberry Hill is also the place where Marley, and later his wife Rita and their children, came to recuperate after the couple were shot in 1976. There is no escaping the thread of violence that runs through his life story – the singer came of age just as Jamaica gained independence in 1962 with political factions fighting for power, a mood brilliantly captured in the song Simmer Down.

Kingston’s scary reputation – which isn’t helped by a large billboard on the airport road advising “Stop the Killing – Give up the Guns” – is one reason many travellers stay away. For those who persevere there is plenty to enjoy, from the Coronation Market, opened in 1936, to Devon House, a stately mansion built in 1881 by George Stiebel, Jamaica’s first black millionaire, which is now filled with foodie emporia.

Marley spent his teenage years in the stillimpoverished neighbour hood of Trench Town, working briefly as a welder with Desmond Dekker and releasing his first record Judge Not at the age of 16.

Regrettably, the Culture Yard, which offers insights into his time here, is currently closed due to the pandemic. While downtown Kingston shows signs of regeneration, most obviously in the vivid murals around Water Lane, some parts of the city remain challenged with police patrols, party-political graffiti and a garrison mindset that doesn’t seem so distant from the days when, as Jamaica’s former prime minister Michael Manley put it, Marley was “the articulate troubadour of the ghetto”.

In 1973, as his success grew, Marley moved into 56 Hope Road, a large mansion in uptown Kingston where he held open house. Today this is the Bob Marley Museum, blissfully uncrowded thanks to Covid, where the mellifluous Oneika Young takes me on a guided tour punctuated with impressive bursts into a relevant song. The detail is fascinating, from the denim bedspread on his double bed and the bulletholes in the kitchen wall, to backdrops painted on burlap that were taken on tour

and portrayed his greatest heroes, Haile Selassie and Marcus Garvey. Petrolheads will appreciate the restored 1977 Series III Land Rover he used to drive around in, but the most atmospheric parts are the pine wood-lined recording studio and engineers’ booth where so many hits were laid down on nowantique mixing desks with more than a thousand buttons.

The last song Marley recorded here was Buffalo Soldier, and for a taste of the Kingston music scene today a visit can be made (once Covid restrictions lift) to Tuff Gong studios, one of the largest in the Caribbean. The hourlong tour includes a chance to see how vinyl records are pressed (and take one home) and step inside its rehearsal room and recording studio if not in use. The day I visit, the

latter is out of bounds because upcoming reggae singer Mortimer is laying down some tracks with producer Overstand, a creative process that clearly requires darkness and ganja.

Fortunately, following the Bob Marley trail isn’t a solely urban quest. He also liked to run and relax on the beaches either side of Kingston. To the east, Bull Bay is Jamaica’s surfing hub where he had a house in which Rita lived with the children. Here, trips were made “Up a Cane River [Falls] to wash my dread”, as acknowledged in the song Trench Town. The construction of a new coastal road is currently making this area unappealing, while the oncegolden Hellshire Beach, a half-hour drive west of the capital, has sadly been diminished by hurricanes and erosion.

A better option is to head to the fine sands lining the north coast, as many Kingstonians now do, which can be reached in an hour driving along a serene, Chinese-built toll motorway that crosses the island. This scenic route allows ample time to reflect on Jamaica’s verdant interior, which is where its soul lies, and it is also the quickest way to reach Nine Mile, the “little place in the hills,” as Marley put it, where he was born.

A trip here is essential if only to appreciate the humble, rural background from which the singer rose to become a global superstar. Less than a year before his death he was playing to a crowd of 110,000 fans at the San Siro Stadium in

Milan, yet it all began in the ramshackle villages of Saint Ann parish that are still reached on winding, single-lane roads full of potholes. Places such as Stepney, where he went to school, and Alderton, where he lived with his Aunt Amy. Here goats wander, farmers tend smallholdings planted with yams, callaloo and bananas, and it is easy to imagine the slow-moving days when there was time enough to fashion a rudimentary guitar from bamboo, hide and sardine tins.

“Nine Mile is both the birth and resting place of Bob Marley,” explains Captain Crazy, a genial, barefooted Rastafarian guide who leads me through a mural-bedecked compound that rises up the hillside. First we visit the house of the musician’s mother, Cedella Booker, with its handmade dolls and sewing machines. I learn how he was born here in 1945 when she was 19, his father being 60-yearold Captain Norval Marley, an English supervisor who died when his son was 10. We discuss Bob’s offspring – officially 11 children from seven different relationships – of whom several, such as Ziggy, Damian and Ky-Mani, are now music stars in their own right.

Higher up is Mount Zion, home to a small Ethiopian Orthodox church, the simple two-room house where Marley was raised, and a pair of mausoleums – one for his mother and another he shares with his half-brother, Anthony, who was shot by police in Miami in 1990 at the age of 19.

Marley didn’t move to Kingston until he was 12 and the countryside meant a lot to him. In 1967 he returned to Nine Mile for a spell, planting crops and connecting with the land. Today the world seems to be catching up with his Rastafarian beliefs: the value of a plant-based diet, the benefits of cannabis, the urgent need to respect nature. Peace is still eluding us, though, and that is one reason his much-loved music is being brought to a West End stage. “We want to spread some unity,” explains Suzette Newman, lead producer of Get Up, Stand Up! – and with a cast of 25 performing 27 Marley songs over two hours, it is a message still worth hearing.

Get Up, Stand Up! (getupstandupthemusical.com) is previewing now (tickets from £15), with the official opening night on Oct 20 at the Lyric Theatre, London

Nine Mile, in Saint Ann Parish, is where Bob Marley was both born and laid to rest

hBob Marley, whose story is told in a new West End musical