BOB Marley's Legend, the best-selling reggae album, will have a new sound this summer with the release of Legend: Remixed.

The Universal Music Group, which distributes the Marley catalogue, and the family's Tuff Gong company are behind the project.

Fifteen of the 16 songs on the original 1984 album distributed by Island Records are covered by several artistes including Marley's sons, Ziggy and Stephen.

Ziggy's version of Redemption Song is included. Stephen, rappers RAC and Nickodemus also put their spin on Marley songs but the titles have not been disclosed. The album's executive producer is DJ/producer Jason Bentley. Universal Music president/CEO Bruce Resnikoff said Legend: Remixed is another step to introduce Marley's music to a new generation.

"The Marley name and music are precious to us. We are truly honoured to continue Bob's legacy with the support and participation of his family and the Tuff Gong organisation. We feel the release of this album will offer key opportunities to the Marley family to expand their brand, and its message, outside of traditional music venues."

Universal and Tuff Gong will also distribute a documentary, Making of Legend: Remixed, which contains interviews with members of the Marley family, the producer and remixers.

A remix version of Three Little Birds — one of the original songs on Legend — is part of a summer advertising campaign for Hyundai's Assurance Connected Care programme. Legend was released three years after Marley's death. It contains staples such as No Woman No Cry, One Love, Redemption Song, and Waiting In Vain.

The compilation was an instant hit and remains one of Billboard magazine's best-selling catalogue albums with worldwide sales of over 25 million units.

This is the second attempt at marketing Marley's music to a contemporary urban audience. In 1999, Stephen Marley worked with hip-hop acts including Lauryn Hill and Busta Rhymes and singer Steven Tyler of rock band Aerosmith on the album Chant Down Babylon. They appeared in digital duets with the reggae legend on songs like Turn Your Lights Down Low which featured Hill. Chant Down Babylon sold over 500,000 units and was certified gold.

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The album that placed Bob Marley and the Wailers - Bob Marley, Peter Tosh and Bunny Wailer - at the helm of superstardom debuted in the marketplace on April 13, 1973.

Saturday marked 40 years since the release of The Wailers' Catch A Fire, one of the seminal albums in pop music.

Despite the fire and brimstone that branded Reggae music's revolutionary appearance in the 1970s, forty years later, Catch A Fire remains as one of the most successful and to many the greatest Reggae albums of all times.

When Catch A Fire was released in 1973, the Wailers already had three studio albums (The Wailing Wailers (1965), Soul Rebels (1970) and Soul Revolution (1971)) under their belts, along with a best of collection and varying singles that popped up throughout the time span at which point they were signed to CBS Records.


Here are some other reggae recordings released in 1973 that have stood the test of time.

Beat Down Babylon: The debut album from singer Junior Byles, this set was produced by Lee 'Scratch' Perry and released in Britain by Trojan Records. Contains the ominous title track.

Book Of Rules: Produced by Harry 'Harry J' Johnson, this song is arguably the Heptones' finest moment. Features Barry Llewellyn on lead vocals.

All I Have Is Love: Gregory Isaacs was not yet 'The Cool Ruler' but this Phil Pratt-produced hit certainly paved the way for his later success as a lovers rock singer.

Funky Kingston: Toots and The Maytals lose little to The Wailers on this masterpiece which includes the monster title track. This album proved reggae was an international force.

Everyday Wondering (Skanga): Fresh out of Jamaica College, singer Johnny Clarke cut this 'rockers' for producer Rupie Edwards. Became a minor hit in Britain.

Silver Words (Ken Boothe) and Westbound Train (Dennis Brown): Both songs produced by Winston 'Niney' Holness for his emerging Observer label, they feature the Soul Syndicate band on top of their game.

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Reggae artiste History Man has documented the life of reggae legend Bob Marley in a song called Bob Marley Story. According to the artiste, his career was moulded by Marley's musical teachings.

"I made this song out of respect for Bob Marley because he has been an inspiration to my life and my musical journey. Last year, during Bob's birthday celebration, I wanted to do something special that would always stand out and teach the next generation, so I decided to make a song because that is what I do best," History Man said.

The artiste said he went through a meticulous process in producing the song, and expressed that he learnt much from the journey into Marley's past.

"Bob's life was very dynamic and relatively unhinged, so I had to connect all those dots in order to tell the story and create a vivid picture. It was quite hectic to pick out different elements of his development and put it in one song but at the end of the day, it was worth it because I learnt a lot," he said.

According to the artiste, the youths are not made properly aware of their past and he is poised to be the bridge in the education gap.

History Man reads a lot in an effort to keep himself abreast of what is happening around the world, the changes it constantly goes through.

The young generation don't really know much about their history because our media is one-sided and mostly sheds light on dancehall these days, but I believe that the roots must be cherished if we want to get fruits from the branches, so as long as there is rhythm, I will teach and document the history of our rich musical heritage," History Man said.

The artiste debuted Bob Marley Story at The Jamaica Reggae Industry Association's Trench Town Festival, hosted at the Vin Lawrence Park in Trench Town, last year. The song was well received by the patrons and was rewarded with a triple encore, signalling its potential.

History Man is now looking to further enhance the telling of the Bob Marley Story with a music video, to be directed by Asha of Fareye Films Productions.

The Video will be shot in St Ann, at the location that Bob Marley was born, Trench Town, where he spent the formative years of his musical career, as well as other areas like Greenwich Town.

"I wrote to the Bob Marley Foundation and I am presently awaiting permission to use the image and clips of Bob Marley and his family and so far they have been very receptive," History Man explained.History Man recently participated in a march, symbolising the disapproval of injustice in Jamaica. The march started at the Ward Theatre in downtown Kingston and ended at Mandela Park in Half-Way Tree.

He recently returned from a tour of Canada and is booked to perform at a charity show in Mexico. In addition to this, the reggae artiste is anticipating the official signing to the 5 Rivers Entertainment recording label in Mississauga, Canada.

Bob Marley Story is recorded on the classic Sleng Teng rhythm.

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A new documentary on the life of reggae legend Bob Marley is scheduled to open April 20 in the United States. Directed by Scottish director, Kevin Macdonald, Marley will be distributed by Magnolia Pictures.

According to the Hollywood Reporter publication, the documentary will be shown in theatres, and will be available in Video On Demand and digital format. It will be first shown during this week's Berlin International Film Festival.

Its first showing will be at the March 9-17 SXSW Film Festival in Austin, Texas.

"Bob Marley is a fascinating, towering figure in musical history, and Marley is the biography that he deserves," Magnolia president Eamonn Bowles is quoted as saying. "Kevin Macdonald has once again shown himself to be a master documentarian with this eye-opening, entertaining, beautifully crafted film."

Macdonald won an Academy Award in 1999 for directing One Day In September.

For Marley, he used rare footage, archival photos, performances and interviews with family, friends and bandmates for fans and persons who know little of the singer/songwriter to get an authentic portrayal of his life.

Steve Bing of Shangri-La Entertainment and Charles Steel co-produced Marley while Marley's oldest son, Ziggy, and Island Records founder Chris Blackwell are executive producers. Island distributed several of Marley's best albums.

"This documentary is the ultimate revelation of my father's life," said Ziggy Marley. "The family is proud to be able to have the world finally experience this emotional journey."

The Marley documentary has been the subject of much speculation.

High-profile film-makers such as Martin Scorsese and Jonathan Demme were rumoured to be potential directors before Macdonald was offered the job.

Marley, reggae's most enduring figure, is best known for songs like No Woman Nuh Cry, One Love and Exodus, died from cancer in May, 1981 at age 36.

Source: Jamaica Oserver

Bob Marley's musical legacy may be waning 30 years after his death as Jamaica's youth prefers dancehall to reggae, but the singer remains a cult, if highly commercialised, figure.

Marley has become a merchandiser's dream, with everything from shoes to snowboards bearing his image, but his friends say it would be tragic if his message of justice for the oppressed gets lost to corporate greed.

"He was never about commercialism," one friend, Herbie Miller, told AFP. "Money was not his greatest motivation."

For loyal fans of the Third World's first pop superstar, who died from cancer at the age of 36 on May 11 1981, this year's milestone anniversary is not about grieving but about celebrating.

"His music was so full of life, it doesn't seem right to mourn him," 24-year-old Bernadette Hellwanter of Vocklabruck, Austria told AFP as she toured the Bob Marley Museum in the Jamaican capital Kingston.

Nickia Palmer stopped briefly to peer at a photo of the dreadlocked legend playing his trademark Gibson guitar.

"The first performance I ever did was at Mount Vernon high school in Fairfax, Virginia and it was No Woman No Cry," recalled the 33-year-old Jamaican singer, who has spent most of his life in the United States.

Fans flock to the museum, an English-style building where Marley lived and wrote many of his songs.

Tours are also conducted daily in the village of Nine Mile in the rural St Ann parish where Marley was born in February 1945 and where a mausoleum now provides his final resting place.

But despite all the T-shirts, the mugs and the many iconic images of the pot-smoking, football-loving Rastafarian, there is a sense his star could be beginning to fade.

The Marley Foundation, which oversees the singer's estate, says no events are planned to mark the 30th anniversary of his death.

Music from the rebel who introduced reggae to an international audience gets only token play nowadays on the local radio and his message appears lost on today's Jamaican youth.

Feel-good songs like Three Little Birds and One Love are preferred to more militant tracks such as Exodus or The Heathen.

According to Miller, the ubiquitous One Love has reduced Marley's revolutionary message to a catchphrase for Jamaica's tourism industry.

"This is a man who took a bullet for his country. The powers that be in Jamaica are trying to make him soft," he said.

In Trench Town, the Kingston ghetto that inspired some of Marley's most memorable songs, there are few visitors to the tenement where he once lived during the 1960s.

Artefacts include the shell of a Volkswagen van that Marley used to sell his records and a bed he slept on.

"As someone who was born in Trench Town, 'Gong' (Marley's nickname) had a big impact (on me)," 48-year-old roots-reggae singer I-Cient-Cy Mau told AFP.

"Him always had time for the youths an' that's something missing from reggae today."

But the sounds Marley made during the 1970s appear almost foreign to today's Jamaican youth, more caught up with flamboyant dancehall acts like Vybz Kartel and Movado.

Overseas, perhaps, there is more room for nostalgia.

Marley performed twice in his life in Belgium, but according to Brice DePasse, a Belgian journalist with the Nostalgie television station, he left an indelible mark.

"He's been big in Belgium since 1977 when he first performed there. There's not a day that his music is not played," said DePasse.

To commemorate his death, Nostalgie will air the hour-long documentary In The Footsteps of Bob Marley today.

Source: Jamaica-Observer

THE late Bob Marley, who would be 66 years old today, remains the king of reggae based on his continued chart dominance over contemporaries.

Marley is currently ten times more popular than Jewish-American reggae singer Matisyahu, five times more than Shaggy and four times more than Sean Paul based on Google trend search data which analysed the most popular living reggae artistes. This popularity translates into chart dominance despite his passing nearly 30 years ago.

Currently, Marley albums top the charts in 19 countries based on checks on iTunes reggae albums charts including US, UK, France Australia, Germany, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Greece, Iceland, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland.

Many of those country charts have more than one Marley album charting simultaneously. A tally of all Marley albums currently top 10 charting amounts to 69 spread out in 22 countries.

Digital music accounts for one-third of total music sales, and iTunes is the dominant online music retailer according to the Digital Music Report 2011 by the IFPI. His chart success is incomparable despite his passing in May 11, 1981.

Local music experts, including culture minister Olivia 'Babsy' Grange and music entrepreneur Charles Campbell, have lamented the waning influence Jamaican artistes are having within international reggae markets, especially Europe and Japan. Up to this past week, less than 10 per cent of the reggae charts on iTunes were occupied by living Jamaicans — including Damian Marley, Sean Paul, Jimmy Cliff and TOK.

This apparent waning influence hasn't affected Legend by Bob Marley and the Wailers which has racked up the sales now over 20 million copies. It is currently charting in its 962nd week making it the second longest charting catalogue album according to Billboard, the US music bible. Pink Floyd's Dark Side Of The Moon is the longest charting catalogue album at 990 weeks.

Marley's influence transcends the reggae category. Last year he was listed as a top-five global icon in a CNN International poll released, affirming the popularity of the late reggae star. The US-based news agency stated that the Jamaican-born musician's status was so large that he embodied a musical form and religion.

"No performer personified reggae and Rastafari more than Bob Marley, a musical inspiration for millions. Responsible for bringing together warring factions in Jamaica, its small wonder he was honoured with a state funeral," stated CNN in a poll conducted by Icon, its arts and culture programme.

US pop singer Michael Jackson topped the list with votes nearing 100,000 according to CNN. He was followed by the UK group The Beatles, Chinese pop star Leslie Cheung, Elvis Presley of the US and Marley.

Source: Jamaica-Observer

He was reggae’s most famous son and the man credited with doing more to promote the culture of Rastafari than anyone else. Jamaica-born Bob Marley remains an iconic figure, and his record sales to date are believed to top £190 million. He died in May 1981 from cancer, age 36.

But despite his official cause of death being widely accepted as acral lentiginous melanoma, nearly three decades later, his granddaughter, Donisha Prendergast, a documentary film-maker, is controversially claiming that the real cause of Marley’s death was deliberate poisoning.

The 25-year-old, who lives in Kingston, Jamaica, was in the United Kingdom filming a documentary on Rastafari. She told The Voice: “Somebody killed him. Look at history, it shows us what they do to our leaders. He was a healthy man who exercised regularly. I would love to believe that he died of natural causes, but history won’t allow me to. I believe he was poisoned.”

Prendergast is the daughter of Sharon Marley Prendergast, who Bob adopted when he married her mother Rita. The young film-maker refuses to accept reports that her grandfather’s death was a natural one, and makes the astonishing claim that he was poisoned by “political interests who feared his outspokenness to educate the masses about the Babylon system.”

Prendergast said: “Every time I look at a Rasta man I can’t help but remember my grandfather.

Bob Marley was reggae music in a lot of ways. He wasn’t just speaking to entertain people or to make a dollar, instead what he was saying cost him his life.

“His life has inspired me to explore Rasta around the world. I wanted to know what Rasta was like around the world. I thought I was just going to see the roots and evolution, but Rasta is a cultural expression.

“Not everybody who wears dreadlocks or smokes weed will claim to be Rasta, but they’re expressing Rasta in a certain essence, so it’s just about understanding that.”

Her documentary, Rasta: A Soul’s Journey, will examine how Rastafarian communities have evolved in the UK, United States, Israel, India, Jamaica, South Africa, Ethiopia and Canada.

Prendergast will meet people who have chosen a Rastafarian lifestyle and she hopes viewers will be enlightened about who Rastas are and how they live. Her main goal is to remind black people that they are African and that Africa is accessible today.

She said: “Rastas are very secretive and mystical people. We don’t believe in giving a lot of our energies to this world, instead we keep it in our community, as we are building a nation of African-minded people.

“There is a lot to do in Africa. That’s where my grandmother currently lives. The media has told us a lot of lies; it’s up to us to really seek truth and remember that we only know what they tell us,” she told The Voice.

Prendergast also wants to educate those of African heritage about the importance of embracing their natural identity instead of adapting to the white aesthetic of straight hair and fair skin.

“It’s important to embrace African identity. Rasta is the only movement that is keeping Africa alive. Look at my hair. The fact that I’ve allowed my hair to grow naturally is an African expression. One must come to know oneself outside of what the westerners teach.

“My family are Rasta. We are all African and the Western society deceives us and forces us to conform, and it doesn’t suit us. I stopped wearing jeans because I don’t like how men respond to me. So now I wear skirts. My gran lives in Africa and has lived there for the past three years.

“I’m not looking for awards from the film, but instead I want to expose people to themselves. This film will go international and will be shown theatrically in schools. We want to take it all over the world.”

Despite plans for the film to be broadcast internationally, she said what satisfies her most is knowing that Bob would be happy to see her doing what he would have wanted her to.

She said: “The system of Babylon that my grandfather talks about, is it real? The fact that I have to spend money to eat, I can’t pick a fruit off a tree because somebody may sue me. There are hungry people in this world when others’ bellies are too full. Let’s not ignore these things. Where is the justice and the love in this world?”

Source: The Gleaner - Jamaica

Another attempt to revive interest in Trench Town's musical legacy will be made on Tuesday with the all-day Trench Town Rock event which is being organised by the Manifesto Jamaica group.

Live performances from bands, singers and deejays are scheduled to dominate the proceedings, but Janine 'Jah 9' Cunningham of Manifesto Jamaica says nyabingi drumming, storytelling, kumina dancing, an agricultural seminar and a martial arts exhibition are also planned.

"It's going to be a full day of arts-based activities, things to uplift the mind," Cunningham said.

Trench Town Rock is the latest in a series of culture events involving Manifesto Jamaica, which was formed approximately one year ago. The 20-member group has overseen similar projects in August Town, Greenwich Farm, Seivright Gardens and Seaview Gardens.

Manifesto Jamaica is mainly funded by the Canada Fund for Local Initiatives. They promoted a three-day Manifesto Festival at the Jamaica School of Music in October.

Performing acts

Cunningham, a singer, is just one of the many acts down to perform.

Others include the Uprising Band, Doniki, Torch, I-Cient-Cy Mau and the Mau Mau Warriors, Earl 'Chinna' Smith and Inna The Yard, Buddy T, Rawyal Afrikan Souljahs and Hugo English.

Many of Jamaica's influential artistes came out of Trench Town. The most famous of these performers were The Wailers which included Bob Marley, Peter Tosh and Bunny 'Wailer' Livingston, who all went on to have successful solo careers.

Alton Ellis, The Heptones and The Abyssinians also started their careers in Trench Town, which was an expanse of shacks up to the late 1960s.

There have been attempts to honour the community's entertainment history, including the establishment of the Bob Marley Culture Yard in the 1990s. The Culture Yard is the restored tenement where Marley once lived and which inspired some of his most enduring songs, such as No Woman No Cry.

The site, which houses a bed and van once owned by the reggae superstar, has not drawn the hundreds of tourists administrators hoped it would. They blame gang violence in Trench Town and neighbouring areas for the low attendance.

Source: Jamaica Gleaner