Spirituality and music were two crucial components of Bob Marley's life. For him, the two were inseparable. He believed that music was love, was God, was power. Here, his Rastafarian mentor, Mortimer Planno explains that for Marley, music was something transcendent...
The Rastafari movement has spread throughout much of the world, largely through immigration and interest generated by Nyahbinghi and reggae music—most notably, that of Bob Marley, who was baptised Berhane Selassie (Light of the Trinity) by the Ethiopian Orthodox Church before his death, a step also taken later by his widow Rita. By 2000, there were more than one million Rastafari worldwide. About five to ten percent of Jamaicans identify themselves as Rastafari. Most Rastafarians are vegetarian, or only eat limited types of meat, living by the dietary Laws of Leviticus and Deuteronomy in the Old Testament.
In his epic study of creative individuals, Creativity: Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi summarized the ethical phenomenon of exceptionally creative people as a realization of "the systemic interconnection among the events that happen on the planet, and they are struggling to act on this realization. One way of saying what they are trying to do is that they are attempting to develop a domain of global responsibility and a field to implement it" (314-315).
Marley's situation could be viewed from the perspective that his domanin of spirituality was Rastafarianism and the field was Reggae music. "Jammin" was its implementation.
This version of "Jammin'" is performed by one of the many evolutions of the band known as Bob Marley and the Wailers. Though band members came and went, the music played on, regardless of who filled what role. One of the notable members with staying power was Marley's wife, Rita, who suppported him unconditionally, even through Bob's many extramarital affairs. She was one of the "I Threes," the female back-up singers in the video. Another bandmember who enjoyed fame and success beyond the Wailers, was Peter Tosh, whose reggae music is still viewed as some of the best.
The Wailers were what R. Keith Sawyer calls a "collaborative web" (Explaining Creativity, p. 257). It was a large band, a traveling band, in which each member contributed a precise and personal skill that added to the intensity of the music and the message. Even when bandmembers left the band, they carried their music out individually or with other reggae bands, thus weaving a network of collaborative webs.
In a string of the collaborative web, the rock and roll musician Eric Clapton recorded a cover version of Marley's "I Shot the Sheriff," on his 1974 album 461 Ocean Boulevard. Clapton's was the most commercially successful version of the song, peaking at #1 on the Billboard Hot 100, making it Clapton's only chart-topping hit in the U.S. Ironically, his version was also inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame. (Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Shot_the_Sheriff)
"My music will go on forever. Maybe it's a fool say that, but when me know facts, me can say facts. My music will go on forever."
-Bob Marley
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