Bob Marley would have turned eighty today

Bob Marley, if he had given permission for the operation, would today be younger than the currently living and performing Bob Dylan, Paul McCartney and Mick Jagger - but as a true Rastafarian, he decided otherwise.

Although Bob, whom Cedelle Booker gave birth to at the age of sixteen, is considered "an ordinary guy from Jamaica," his father was 60-year-old former British Navy General Norval Marley. Bob saw his father only twice in his life, and Cedelle and her son, who moved from the village to the capital of Jamaica, Kingston, after the death of Norval Marley, who served as a manager on a plantation, could only afford to settle in the poor area of ​​​​Treadtown.

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Although Marley took up music early, he had to earn a living first as a welder in Jamaica, and then for some time in the United States, where he ended up with his mother at a car factory. Bob's mother raised him as a Catholic, but when her influence on her son ended, he became interested in Rastafarianism, which would later determine his entire life and even death.

Rastafarians believe that the chosen people are not the Jews, but the Negroid race, the promised land is not Israel, but Ethiopia, whose emperor Haile Selassie I was supposedly one of the incarnations of Yahweh on Earth.

Jesus Christ, according to the founder of Rastafarianism Marcus Garvey, was black, like the Virgin Mary and the angels, and the devil was white. And paradise is not in heaven, but in Ethiopia, where the inhabitants of Jamaica must return, leaving Babylon, which Rastafarians call the entire Western world with its desire for money.

One of the dogmas of Rastafarianism is non-interference in nature. Because of this, Bob Marley died at the age of only 36, when he became not just a musician for the people of Jamaica and Rastafarian followers around the world, but a living saint, because he refused to amputate his toe, which was affected by one of the fastest-growing types of cancer, melanoma, and it metastasized throughout the body. As he said: "Rasta does not accept amputation. I do not allow a person to be taken apart for spare parts." As for Marley's music, one can spend a long time understanding the history of reggae, remembering, for example, that the roots of this music in Jamaica were the styles of dub, ska, gospel, soul and rock-steady, which united some of them.

Instead of music halls and clubs, such as, for example, the "Beatles'" Cavern, or apartments with radios, Jamaican music sounded literally "in the field". After all, in the 50s of the last century, Jamaicans were so poor that they could not buy a record player. And then those who were richer assembled homemade sound systems from a record player and amplification equipment, put them on carts and drove them around towns and villages, organizing discos. These monsters even had their own name - "Jamaican sound system".

From the combination of all these unique factors, unlike the usual and traditional, a unique musician was born, whose birthday is celebrated with kind words and music not only by followers of Rastafarianism.

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