Caribbean Festival

A Tribute To Cedella Marley Booker

by Bryan Lahr on January 23, 2009 at 06:23PM

Last April, on a beautiful Miami day, I rolled into a friend's house to find a bunch of long faces. "What's up with the gloom?" I asked. After a painful pause, someone said, "Bob Marley's mom just died. There's a memorial tonight at Fairchild Gardens. We're heading over there."

I didn't know Cedella Marley Booker personally. I only knew her through my connection to the music of her mega-talented family. She was born in 1926 in Rhoden Hall, in Jamaica. When she was 18, Captain Norval Marley, a plantation overseer seduced her.She became pregnant,and gave birth to The King Of Reggae, Robert Nesta Marley, better know as Bob Marley. She and the Captain got married, but it wasn't a happy marriage and they soon split. He hardly ever saw them and died when Bob was 10.

Cedella ran a small grocery store before moving to a slum section of Kingston called Trenchtown. They suffered many hardships there that became the melting pot for Bob Marley's music.

The grooves and lyrics he shaped are still as fresh and relevant as the day he wrote them. they have transcended music and become basis for a philosophy, a religion, that has spread across the world. His image still covers posters and Tshirts in all corners of the globe.

After his death in 1981 she became the "keeper of the flame" for the movement. A symbol of solidarity, she held the family together while the seeds Bob planted took root. There's Bob's widow Rita, his son Ziggy and his group the Melody Makers, which also features three more of Bob's kids. And there's the Grammy winning reggae star Damiam Marley.

It was a beautiful day in a beautiful place. Even though most of the people at the memorial hadn't actually met Cedella, everyone felt like they had lost a special mkember of their own family. Some people leave an enormous void when they leave. And the world is less of a place.

On February 28th there's a concert in tribute to Cedella Marley, mother of reggae legend Bob Marley. Come celebrate her life with music and song with her family and friends.