The Unique Oral History of Bob Marley Part 2

Last week I introduced the 2017 book called So Much Things to Say: The Oral History of Bob Marley by Roger Steffens which is a unique book that tells tales known and unrevealed about the Robert Nesta Marley, commonly known as Bob Marley.

We stopped by looking at a quotation from Higgs as follows: ‘When Bunny and Bob were growing up together, Bob was not treated as one of the family. He was like an outcast in the house. His mother today comes with this legacy, as if she were there. Bob was sent to learn welding, while Bunny was sent to school. Toddy (Bunny’s father) didn’t put any money into Bob’s corner. The mother, Cedella, wouldn’t allow anybody to know he was her son. One day he was holding tightly to her, and she box him away. He slept beneath the bottom of the house.’

His step brother Bunny Wailer agrees: ‘Bob was a wild child. He was like the ugly duckling. He had to find his own little brush to pick, and his own little cornmeal. Nobody wanted him around their corn, so he gets what’s left. He just had to survive. His most serious endeavour was just to eat and drink. There were many nights of cold ground for his bed and rock stone for his pillow. Countless nights. Bob was not a child who get anything that he sought. He didn’t get what any other child got’.

Higgs explains in the book that he first encountered Bob Marley when he was on Second Street and he was on Third Street and was known as a very light-skinned chap living in the ghetto. People called him the little red boy, and he would be beaten up by a lot of guys.

“This is when Bob and Bunny were living in Toddy’s house with Cedella”.

Higgs explains that a guy by the name of Errol Williams, whose father was a man who had a scrap iron yard on Spanish Town Road and Bread Lane near Back O’ Wall, used to tell him he’d like him (Higgs) to teach Bob Marley to sing and play music.

Higgs says Errol was like Bob’s father and mother; he’d give him daily ten shillings or a pound. Errol according to Higgs was a half Indian guy, from a family of the owners of Queen’s Theatre, King’s Theatre and a Vineyard Town theatre. Errol was always a father figure to Bob, older.

Steffens says he named the book With So Much Things to Say – The Oral History of Bob Marley, after one of Bob’s most evocative compositions. He says in the book he set out to illuminate with first-person depth the parts of Bob’s life that have been only partially explored.

The book’s main topics include Bob’s pre-recording years in Kingston; the backstage reality of Coxson Dodd’s Studio One; his exile from Kingston in 1966 and 1967; the Danny Sims–Johnny Nash manoeuvrings of the late sixties and early seventies; the perilous history of the group’s relationship with Lee Perry and the disquieting reasons for their split; the breakup of the group in 1973; the assassination attempt in 1976; an inquiry into whether the CIA was complicit in the attempt on his life; the controversial events leading to the One Love Peace Concert; his trips to Africa, including shocking behind-the-scenes stories of Gabon and Zimbabwe; and the history of his fatal cancer and its treatment.

The other interesting aspect in the book is where Steffens says racism was rampant in those days, and the light-skinned leaders of the country were deeply influenced by four hundred years of British colonial rule.

For Bob, Steffens writes, ‘his colour seemed to be an impediment wherever he turned, causing him to turn inward, a solitary soul relying on his own inner strengths. Even more significantly, the rejection by his father weighed heavily on him throughout his life’.

Reggae music popularised Rastafarian way of life and Bob has a bigger portion of credit for introducing it to the rest of the world. The book also captures how Rastafarian livity came about while Bob Marley and his colleagues were about to set up themselves, musically.

Writes Steffens: “They (Rastas) had their own language, too, based on the holy trinity of word, sound and power. One conceives the word and when it is sounded from a pure heart it is the very power of creation itself. “Weakheart conception haffe drop,”

goes one of their favourite expressions. That is, if you have an impure motive, whatever you are saying is doomed to death and destruction. Everything in the Rasta lingua must therefore be positive and constructive. And there must be no separation among mankind—thus the locution “I and I,” meaning you and I, God and I, God in I, because we are all one manifestation of the true and living God. “Yes I,” say the Rasta, because they are really talking to themselves.”

He further explains: “Thus, there are no plurals in Rasta-speak, underlining the “I”-nity of all. They don’t go to a university but to an iniversity; nor would they visit a library, rather a true-brary, because lies lie buried in a lie-brary.”