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Posted on 01/12/2005 7:06:04 AM PST by propertius
Reggae star Bob Marley’s widow plans to exhume his remains in Jamaica and rebury them in his “spiritual resting place,” Ethiopia.
The reburial is set for February when month long celebrations of the 60th anniversary of Marley’s birth are planned in Ethiopia.
Both the Ethiopian church and government officials have expressed support for the project, Rita Marley said in Addis Ababa today.
“We are working on bringing his remains to Ethiopia,” said Rita, a former backing singer for Marley’s band, The Wailers. “It is part of Bob’s own mission.”
Marley died of cancer in 1981.
Rita Marley said her husband would be reburied in Shashemene, 155 miles south of the capital, where several hundred Rastafarians have lived since they were given land by Ethiopia’s last emperor, Haile Selassie.
Hundreds of thousands of Jamaicans embraced Haile as their living god and head of the Rastafarian religious movement.
Marley was a devout Rastafarian, a faith whose followers preach a oneness with nature, grow their hair into long matted strands called dreadlocks and smoke marijuana as a sacrament.
“Bob’s whole life is about Africa, it is not about Jamaica,” said Rita, a Cuban-born singer who married Marley in 1966.
“How can you give up a continent for an island? He has a right for his remains to be where he would love them to be. This was his mission. Ethiopia is his spiritual resting place,” she said. “With the 60th anniversary this year, the impact is there and the time is right.”
Here is AP story.
ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia (AP) — The wife of reggae star Bob Marley said Wednesday that she plans to exhume his remains in Jamaica and rebury them in his "spiritual resting place," Ethiopia.
The reburial is set for February when monthlong celebrations of the 60th anniversary of Marley's birth anniversary are planned in Ethiopia. Both the Ethiopian church and government officials have expressed support for the project, Rita Marley told The Associated Press.
"We are working on bringing his remains to Ethiopia," said Rita, a former backing singer for Marley's band, The Wailers. "It is part of Bob's own mission."
Marley was born in St. Ann, Jamaica, in 1945. He died of cancer in 1981.
Rita Marley said her husband would be reburied in Shashemene, 250 kilometers (155 miles) south of Addis Ababa where several hundred Rastafarians have lived since they were given land by Ethiopia's last emperor, Haile Selassie.
Hundreds of thousands of Jamaicans embraced Haile as their living god and head of the Rastafarian religious movement.
Marley was a devout Rastafarian, a faith whose followers preach a oneness with nature, grow their hair into long matted strands called dreadlocks and smoke marijuana as a sacrament.
"Bob's whole life is about Africa, it is not about Jamaica," said Rita, a Cuban-born singer who married Marley in 1966.
"How can you give up a continent for an island? He has a right for his remains to be where he would love them to be. This was his mission. Ethiopia is his spiritual resting place," she said. "With the 60th anniversary this year, the impact is there and the time is right."
Together with the African Union and the U.N. children's agency, Rita Marley has organized celebrations in Ethiopia, including a concert on Marley's birthday, Feb. 6, to be held in Addis Ababa.
The monthlong celebration, dubbed "Africa Unite" after one of Marley's songs, aims to raise funds to help poor families in Ethiopia.
The Marley Family, Senegal's Baaba Maal and Youssou N'Dour, Angelique Kidjo of Benin and other African and reggae artists will perform as part of the US$1 million (€760,000) program.
The event is expected to be broadcast in Africa and beyond.
I was in Ft Worth at a conference and it was Dan Rather on the TV telling me that Bob Marley had died.
FR may not be among the places most sympathetic to, or appreciative of Bob Marley, but his music was the soundtrack to a lot of interesting times in the 70's.
RIP Bob.
Now I feel like jamming...
Bob Marley was a loser socialist. If you have to listen to Reggae, listen to Peter Tosh.
"smoke marijuana as a sacrament"
beddy interestinggggggggggggggg!
really really sounds like a fake religion to me
That's interesting, given the subject of this post. ;)
"He died of cancer in 1981."
Wow, time flies.
I have read nothing to suggest that Tosh's politics were substantially different than Marley's.
Kinda the point.
RIP, wherever you rest.
Maybe this isn't the real Ethiopian Church but that cult that uses marijuana and calls itself "Ethiopian," huh?
I've always wondered why the Ethiopian Church (the real one) hasn't assumed a higher profile in the movement of American Blacks to find an "identity" of some kind, instead allowing the latter to drift into islam, especially considering the place of Ethiopia in r*sta mythology. Instead the Ethiopian Church is invisible.
Another irony is that this isolated, insular (and very strange) Church and its royal family were supporters of leftwing third world national liberation movements in Africa as well as of the US civil rights movement.
I'm gonna ask it again: when do we rednecks get a leftwing national liberation movement?
This all goes back to my teenage years, but Tosh and Marley hated each other, as did their supporters. Anyway, I thought a lot of it had to do with Marley being a socialist and Tosh being a capitalist, but I could be wrong.
This is wrong....wonder what all his spawn besides those with Rita think.....like Cindy Breakespeare.
He should stay in the dirt in St Anns....lovely place and from whence he came.
Well..at least Wales never claimed his bones as a "son".
Reminds me of an old John Prine song.
Marley was good, but give me Burning Spear any day!
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His music was good. Who cares about his politics?
Bob Marley and the *Walers*?
What I read was that part of it was Tosh's rather prickly personality, as well as the fact that Marley wanted to be more mainstream, and Tosh didn't.
Well, I guess I never really liked the music that much, where as Tosh's Legalize It, regardless of what one thinks of the legalize it song, is a great album.
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