Documentary 'Rebel music' shows Bob Marley's life in the context of Jamaica's history!

Robert Nesta Marley (1945 - 1981) is today considerably greater than when he stopped breathing two decades ago. The end-of-century assessments highlighted the strength of his music, born among rebellious teenagers from the Trenchtown slum in Kingston, Jamaica.

Marley created the second musical genre generated in the Third World that managed to reach the mainstream of the First, reggae. Except that, unlike bossa nova, today relegated to elevators and waiting rooms, Marley's reggae continues to be a powerful weapon of transformation. Amnesty International adopted 'Get up stand up' as the symbolic song of the fight for human rights, the song 'One love' was chosen by the BBC as the song of the millennium and he was featured in the best-of-the-century polls by the 'New York Times' and 'Time' magazine.

Bob Marley's story within the context of Jamaican history in the second half of the last century is in the DVD 'Rebel music - The Bob Marley story' (Universal), released in Brazil in the original version, without Portuguese subtitles. With the exception of Marley's own interviews, the English is understandable to diligent students of serious language courses. There are testimonials from his mother, Cedella Booker, his wife Rita, bandmates Bunny Livingston, Peter Tosh (1944 - 1987) and Al Anderson, as well as politicians and even a former CIA agent, Philip Agee, about the American spy agency's campaign against the socialist-leaning government of Prime Minister Michael Manley (1924 - 1997) in the 70s.

The DVD is packed with Marley songs, including rare images from his early career, but there isn't a single complete song. When you're at the peak of 'Exodus song', for example, the stuffy narrator or some interviewee cuts in. The producers don't seem to know how to reconcile the two things. But the narrative is very well conducted in interlinking Marley's trajectory with Jamaica's history.

Marley had colonialist heritage in his blood. His father was a white Englishman, Norval Marley, who impregnated the black teenager Cedalla, married her but left and abandoned the two of them, forcing Cedalla to leave the countryside and try life in the capital. The DVD shows images of independence in 1962, the time when Marley, 17 years old, was already releasing his first single, 'Judge not', starting in music as one of the rude boys of Kingston's slums. There are images of him at these moments and of parties animated by these songs, which were hardly played on the radio, with stations very focused on the repertoire of the British matrix. Later, already with the Wailers, Bunny Livingston recounts that they even resorted to threats to get records played on the airwaves, hinting to disc jockeys that something bad could happen to them if they didn't play the band's music. Before that, Marley had spent time with his mother in Connecticut, USA, where he had saved money to finance Wailers recordings and found inspiration in the struggle of American blacks for civil rights. Back in Jamaica he converted to Rastafarianism, explained in the DVD as a rereading of the Bible to say that blacks are an exiled people in the West who must return to Africa.

At the beginning of his career the Wailers took some baths from unscrupulous people, like producer Lee Scratch Perry, who sold recordings to England without authorization. There are testimonials from Bunny about it but Lee doesn't touch on the subject, speaking only about the recordings at the time, with current images of him and at the occasion, manipulating a studio console and a reel recorder and dancing to the rhythm of the music he was recording.

National success in Jamaica at the turn of the 70s, Marley's political engagement (though non-partisan) earned him a shooting attack, shown with journalistic images from the time, in which he and his wife Rita were lightly injured. Two days later he was already participating in the Smile Jamaica show supporting Manley, who won the election and governed from 1972 to 1980, a turbulent period due to the CIA campaign, arming rival groups and promoting attacks to destabilize his government and bring the right-wing Edward Seaga to power, all this out of fear that a second Cuba would be installed in the Caribbean. The DVD is rich in images showing weapons being loaded, American speeches against Manley and the word of Agee, who was with the agency at the time.

After the attack, Marley exiled himself in London to escape the violence, when he was signed by Island Records, by Chris Blackwell, who drew up the strategy that led reggae to invade Western pop music. Blackwell says he knew about Marley since 1962, but only met him personally in 1973. In this part the documentary shows testimonials from Miss Jamaica Cindy Breakspeare, with whom he stayed in London. Marley was a born womanizer, with lovers and children scattered everywhere. His wife, Rita, says she accepted this stoically and that Bob even called her to remove women from his room. The immense progeny is not addressed in the DVD, which doesn't include testimony from any of the children, many singers, like Ziggy and Damian, the latter recently awarded a Grammy for the CD 'Halfway tree'. Also left aside is reggae's penetration through the London scene, not only falling into the preference of rock stars like Eric Clapton (recorded 'I shot the sheriff', by Marley) but the Rolling Stones (recorded reggae and hired Peter Tosh for their label).

There are excerpts from the great songs of the period, like 'Exodus', 'No woman no cry', One love, Is this love? 'I shot the sheriff' and 'Zimbabwe', the latter with images from the emancipation concert of former Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe, from British dominion in 1980. A strong moment is the One Love Peace Concert, promoted by Marley in 1978, when he joined his hands with those of Manley and Seaga while singing 'One love'. The cancer that killed him is treated in the final part, began as melanoma (skin) and spread through his body until it finished him off in May 1981. The DVD doesn't slip into sentimentality in this part, making a journalistic record of the passage of this unlikely hero of world music.