Months passed before Cedella managed to track down her child and bring him back to his country home. Bob was left to fend almost entirely for himself in Kingston ’s ghettos, generally considered some of the world ’s most dangerous. Captain Marley met the child, but, for reasons unknown, he took him to the home of an elderly, invalid woman and abandoned him there. Bob ’s mother reluctantly agreed and put her young son on the bus to Jamaica ’s largest city. When Bob was about five years old, Cedella received a letter from her estranged husband, who asked that his child be sent to Kingston in order to attend school. He was known as a serious child and had a reputation for clairvoyance. He had virtually no contact with his wife and son for several years, and Bob grew up as the pet of his grandfather Malcolm ’s large clan.

Captain Marley, a white man more than twice Cedella ’s age, married the girl to make the birth legitimate, but he left the countryside the day after his impromptu wedding in order to accept a post in the city of Kingston. The child was the result of her clandestine affair with Norval Marley, the local overseer of crown lands in the rural parish where she lived. Robert Nesta Marley was born to Cedella Malcolm when she was barely nineteen years old. As Jay Cocks wrote in Time, “His music could challenge the conscience, soothe the spirit and stir the soul all at once. Loved by millions for his musical genius, Marley was also a heroic figure to poor and oppressed people everywhere because of his passionate articulation of their plight and his relentless calls for political change.

Were it not for his charisma and ambition, reggae music might still be confined to Jamaica ’s ghettoes where it originated. In his brief life, Bob Marley rose from poverty and obscurity to the status of an international superstar -the first Third World artist to be acclaimed to such a degree.

Bob marley papers