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Marley's african legacy
Marley's legend lives on outside Jamaica
11/05/2001 -
Hotfooting it to Dakar to explore the extent of Marley's legacy in Africa, we make an appointment with Amala Doucouré, one of the star presenters on Senegalese radio and television. But when we arrive at the TV station the door is blocked by a fierce-looking bodyguard who refuses to let us pass, because no-one has informed him of our visit! Numerous ruses to gain entry fail and things are beginning to look increasingly desperate when, as if by miracle, Doucouré himself appears. Looking dapper in a white jacket, his mini-dreadlocks tucked up under a brown hat and sporting a neat little beard, Doucouré limps slowly up the corridor trailing his bad foot (a result of a malformation when he was young). And suddenly the Cerberus stands aside and waves us past his door as if we were visiting royalty!
We follow Doucouré down the corridor into a basic-looking studio, decorated with a couple of old chairs, a makeshift table and three microphones which all look as if they have seen better days. In the corner stand a stack of CDs with worn plastic boxes - the record collection Amala Doucouré is planning on using tonight to present his special tribute to Bob Marley (6 February 1945 - 11 May 1981).
One of the guest stars on Doucouré's show tonight is Francis Dordor, editor-in-chief of monthly French cultural magazine "Les Inrockuptibles". Dordor, one of the rare French journalists to have interviewed Marley five or six times during his short career, is currently in Dakar. And Doucouré has invited him onto his show to get him to talk about the strange but remarkable fact that Bob's musical legacy is stronger today in Africa than it is in his homeland, Jamaica.
Amala Doucouré has been working for Senegal's national radio and television since 1985, presenting his "Reggae Express sur RTS" (on Saturdays at 9pm). As its name suggests, Doucouré's show is devoted to preserving and promoting the "Rastafari riddim". "I organise a Bob Marley tribute every year when May comes round," says Doucouré with obvious pride. And he obviously wasn't going to let the 20th anniversary of Marley's death go by without making a special effort!
It seems hard to believe that it's two decades since the reggae king succumbed to cancer, discovered by chance after he was injured in a football match (football being Marley's other great passion in life besides music). Marley was cut down in his musical prime at the age of 36, but his Rasta philosophy and his infectious reggae beat have lived on long after him. All over Africa, in French-speaking, English-speaking and Portuguese-speaking regions, dozens of Doucourés keep Marley's memory and music alive, playing Bob's legendary reggae hits on stations based all the way from Ndjamena to the Cape. Most of the African presenters involved in perpetuating the Marley myth never saw Bob perform on stage during his lifetime. In fact, several of them were still children when Marley ascended from Babylon and journeyed to Jah's Promised Land. Which was hardly surprising when you consider that Africans only discovered Marley's revolutionary reggae through Western record companies a few years before his death.
As part of our Marley tribute tour we visited Kingston, Jamaica, a few days before the 20th anniversary of the singer's death and spent the afternoon wandering round the city looking for traces of the singer's influence. Disappointed by the city's lack of interesting architecture and oppressed by its strict rectilinear layout - like several major cities in the U.S. Kingston has no real town centre or outskirts - we sought refuge "downtown". Here, just a few dozen metres from the windswept ocean, we discovered the one happening part of town, where the streets were teeming with people and buzzing with bars and shops. But frankly, even downtown Kingston seemed indifferent to the anniversary of its most famous citizen. Apart from a handful of advertising placards reminding (mostly American) tourists that Jamaica was the birthplace of the world's most famous reggae star, there was little trace of Marley's legacy on the streets.
Born on Tuesday, February 6th 1945, Robert Nesta Marley was the son of Cedella, a black peasant girl from the north of Jamaica and Captain Norval Marley, a white supervisor on Her Majesty's Service. The couple had a brief affair which left Cedella pregnant, but after Marley's parents expressed unhappiness with their son's liaison with a black woman, Bob was brought up in his mother's family and barely ever saw his father again. Those wishing to find out more about the reggae king's life story are ill-served in Kingston. The museum dedicated to the singer in Tuff Gong House (the last place Marley lived and recorded in) is ridiculously small when you consider Marley's status as the black Elvis Presley. Or maybe it's just that in modern-day Jamaica, dominated by pornographic 'dance-halls' and crack cocaine, where the police are often as violent and corrupt as the criminals, Marley's Rastafarian message of peace and unity is sadly out of place!
While Marley-mania has died a death on the streets of Kingston, the reggae prophet's legacy lives on in Africa, where it continues to wield considerable influence today. Which is ironic when you consider that Marley rarely ever set foot in Africa in the course of his career! There was, of course, one historic concert in Harare, the capital of Zimbabwe (a country to which Bob dedicated one of his finest songs), where the singer appeared on stage, visibly weakened by illness, just a year before his death.
Why has Marley become a modern-day prophet in Africa rather than Jamaica? is a question you can't help asking yourself when you realise the extent of the singer's influence here. In the mid-70s Marley sang Go Back To Africa , of course, but it was the singer's hypnotic vocals, his powerful reggae beat and his Rastafarian message of peace and unity that really caught on with African youth. For if there was one thing African teenagers aspired to more than anything it was the ideal of Pan-African togetherness, a unity capable of transcending artificial borders of religion and ethnic caste. Marley's infectious reggae beat even spread as far as North Africa, where his legacy lives on today in the music of groups fusing reggae with traditional Raï rhythms.
Following his death in 1981, Marley's legend lived on in the work of two reggae disciples in sub-Saharan Africa - in the work of South African reggae star Lucky Dube and Alpha Blondy from Côte d'Ivoire. Dube's velvet-soft vocals pass on Marley's paradoxical message of 'pacifist violence' (although the singer preached a non-violent message he also sang about the destruction of Babylon, the symbol of all oppression meted out to the black "people") in English, while Blondy perpetuates the Marley legacy in French. And between them these two disciples have opened the way for hundreds of reggae groups across the length and breadth of Africa.
Today, Lucky Dube and Alpha Blondy are ready to pass on the reggae torch to a new guard, spearheaded by Ivoirian protest singer Tiken Jah Fakoly. Fakoly discovered his musical vocation in 1979 at the tender age of 12, listening to Marley's classic Africa Unite. "It was a totally liberating experience," recalls Fakoly with pride, "It didn't make me a Rasta, but from that moment on, I stopped using a comb and let my hair knot into dreadlocks." Fakoly has also chosen to carry on Marley's spirit of protest, reminding fans that "Africa is still not united!"
Robert Nesta Marley died in Miami, in the "Cedars of Lebanon" hospital at 11.35am on May 11th 1981. When his body was flown out to Jamaica 40,000 music fans lined the streets to pay a final tribute. But twenty years on, the reggae king and his music are far from forgotten in Africa!
Bouziane Daoudi
11/05/2011 -
