News to Me

Listening to the Bob Marley box set last night (disc 3), my partner called my attention to the lyrics of the song War. The lyrics are from a speech given by Haile Selassie I, the Ethiopian Emperor from 1930-1974. Selassie gave this speech in 1963 before the United Nations General Assembly:

Until the philosophy
which hold one race superior
and another inferior
is finally and permanently
discredited and abandoned–
Everywhere is war

While flipping through the liner notes book, looking for the lyrics, I stopped at a photo of Bob Marley I have seen many times before. “Bob Marley’s mixed!” I said to my partner. He shrugged; he’s been a lifelong Marley fan, but he didn’t know. I came to the computer–and low and behold, I was right.

Bob Marley is biracial. His mother was Black Jamaican and his father was White Jamaican. Maybe everybody else knows that the most famous Rastafarian and Reggae musician is multiracial–but I didn’t.

Jaja was looking at liner note photos last night. I loved telling her, “That’s Bob Marley. He’s biracial, like you. His mom was Black and his dad was White.” She nodded, smiled, looked and listened more closely.