Making His Way

"...what allows certain individuals to make memorable contributions to the culture is a personal resolution to shape their lives to suit their own goals instead of letting external forces rule their destiny.  Indeed, it could be said that the most obvious achievement of these people is that they created their own lives.  And how they achieved this is something worth knowing, because it can be applied to all our lives, whether or not we are going to make a creative contribution" (Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Creativity, pgs. 151-152).

Five Cool Facts in "Marley" (from a review by Chris Nashawaty Entertainment Weekly. 8/3/2012, Issue 1218, p63):

1. As a kid he was teased for being a "half-breed." His mother was an 18-year-old Jamaican and his father was a 50-year-old white British officer.

2. To cure his stage fright, he would perform in front of graves at a cemetery.

3. Although Marley's band, the Wailers, didn't hit it big until the '70s, their first single was released back in 1964.

4. When he first came to America, he drove a forklift at a Chrysler factory and vacuumed floors at a Delaware hotel.

5. Marley had 11 children with seven different women and, according to some eyebrow-raising reports, smoked a pound of marijuana a day.

    Robert Nesta Marley was the child of Cedella Marley-Booker and Norval Marley.  He was born on             February 6, 1945.

"My father is a white and my mother black.  Now them call me half-caste or whatever.  Well, me don't deh pon nobody's side.  Me don't deh pon the black man's side nor the white man's side.  Me deh pon God's side.  The man who create me.  Who cause me to come from black and white." -Bob Marley from the documentary film "Marley."

Read more about "The Influence of Bob Marley's Absent, White Father":  http://debate.uvm.edu/dreadlibrary/gurtman02.htm

Bob Marley's mother was a central figure in his life.  She supported him in his faith and in his musical career.    Cedella outlived him by almost thirty years and wrote two biographies about her prolific son.  A video in which she eulogizes Robert Nesta Marley can be viewed here:  http://www.bobmarley.com/biography_cedella_marley_booker.php

"We propose that an essential feature of learning is that it creates the zone of proximal development; that is, learning awakens a variety of internal developmental processes that are able to operate only when the child is interacting with people in his environment and in cooperation with his peers" (Vygotsky quoted in Connery, et al, Vygotsky and Creativity, p. 9).

     In the film "Marley," Bob Marley's childhood friend and member of his band The Wailers, Neville "Bunny" Livingston talks of how Bob was "rejected," due to his mixed-race heritage.  Marley had to do his uncles' jobs of moving horses and feeding pigs, and he had to "earn his every meal."  Another friend, Desi Smith tells of how the boys often went to bed hungry, really hungry (they had a saying: "go drink some water" to alleviate their empty stomachs).  Smith muses that a life like that either made you bad or good-- "you were forced to be creative..."
     "Bunny" Livingston takes credit for welcoming Bob Marley to the world of music.  The great Rastafarian leader Mortimer Planno took Bob in as a teenager and continued his musical development.  Producer Lee "Scratch" Perry and others were also key players in Marley's musical evolution.