Ziggy Marley: Black History Month Bonus

00:00:15Speaker 1: Pushkin.00:00:20Speaker 2: Last week we went back and replayed my conversation with Usher to celebrate his Super Bowl performance and the incredible career resurgence he's had over the last couple of years. In thinking about our back catalog of episodes, I thought there was another conversation worth revisiting, Malcolm Gladwell speaking with Ziggy Marley about the cultural influence the tiny country of Jamaica and Ziggy's dad, Bob Marley, have had over the last half a century. The Bob Marley bio Pick One Love, was released in theaters yesterday. I hope anyone familiar with the Bob Marley name or his music will go see it at some point if I wanted to keep the conversation about his songs and his political thinking alive and to guard against his legacy becoming further Whitewashington commercialized, which feels increasingly inevitable as the years after his death continue on. So have a listen to Malcolm's conversation with Ziggy from a couple of years back, see the movie Spend some Time with Males catalog and some of the other great Jamaican music from that time, from Prince Buster to Alton Ellis and beyond. This is broken record liner notes for the digital age.00:01:21Speaker 1: I'm justin Richmond.00:01:23Speaker 2: Here's Malcolm Gladwell and Ziggy Marley. This conversation was taped live as part of the Live Talks Los Angeles series.00:01:31Speaker 1: This book that you've done, with all of these photos of your father, it had a kind of personal residence for me because, as you may know, my mom is Jamaican and when I was growing up in the seventies, we would go to Jamaica every year every Christmas and all these so many of these photos are from the Jamaica that I remember as a kid. It's funny, It's like, I mean, it's very personal for you, but in this weird indirect way, it's personal for me too. You know how when you look at a photo of Jamaica, you can smell Jamaica. I could smell I could smell Jamaica again, It's this lovely like took me back to my childhood. What led you to want to do this book?00:02:11Speaker 3: So over the years we've we've collected a lot of photographs of Bob. I'm from different photographers and stuff like that. And you know, usually I think the photographs you say a Bob are iconic photographs. You know, you always see the iconic images, and so for this, we came upon the seven the fifth at birthday anniversary, and I felt like, let's do some special for the seven fifth. Let's take some of these photos archives and put together a photobook. The family has never done one before, other people have done one. Then I'm totally understand. Always said when you talk about you smell Jamaica the photos because during the book, like it brought me back to that time too, you know, looking at it just it's like it's such a it's such a real experience, a real thing that when I was looking at the photos, it, you know, everything just kind of came back to me.00:03:03Speaker 1: Yeah, when you say, I was just thinking logistically, you said, this is really the family's book. There's so many of you. How on earth did you guys? Did you guys coordinate picking all of these photos? Did you have like a family counsel where you all sat down and went through them?00:03:20Speaker 4: No?00:03:20Speaker 3: No, well I was given a task. I was given that responsibility of going through the photos.00:03:25Speaker 4: That's all we do.00:03:26Speaker 3: Kind of delegate responsibilities. Yeah, you know, everybody, this is your project, your you have you have the family's approval and blessing.00:03:33Speaker 4: Is your project, go ahead and do it, you know.00:03:35Speaker 1: Yeah, Well, tell me about your your memories of your father. You so, you're born in sixty eight, so you when he dies, you're you're just a teenager.00:03:44Speaker 4: Yeah, it was going on thirteen.00:03:47Speaker 1: Yeah, tell me tell me a little bit about what you remember of your father.00:03:51Speaker 3: Well everything, I mean, they's not'ing to forget really, because the limited experience we've had with him, you know, everything was memorable and left everlasting impact on my psyche. You know, I said everything it was like going to school, but a different type of school, you know, I said, like so growing not put bob. I mean, there was different elements. It was fun side, happicide and clear on the children.00:04:14Speaker 4: We will travel to the countryside, this hometown every now and again. I didn't fun. I remember those days. They were no seats.00:04:21Speaker 3: He would have been a lap in the front seat or seat no no, no ear back.00:04:25Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I believe it. I remember that Jamaica in the back of the Volkswagen Beetle driven by my uncle.00:04:33Speaker 2: Yeah yeah.00:04:35Speaker 4: My my mom had one of those two. She had one of those Beatles too.00:04:38Speaker 1: Yeah.00:04:39Speaker 3: Yeah, But I mean and then there was a serious side. It was what I saw was a lot of discipline.00:04:46Speaker 4: This money.00:04:46Speaker 3: I love work hard this mane, I love discipline, this money. He's from the countryside and he's so rute rooted in his humility that for him to call back to his home towne I go back to trenchtone in the ghetto.00:05:02Speaker 4: It was like, it's just it's just Bob. This is just Bob. It's not like Bob.00:05:05Speaker 3: The the superstar or whatever, you know, It's just bib So. I mean lots of socle, lots of football, socle music, socle music, and the spiritual side of it was very powerful thing. And as love having Bible. And he would take me and my brother Steve into this what you call him. It's like service, like you know people got to church service, or people go to the synagague or the masque. When we had these thing called naia bingis and we would it would be like some weird time at night.00:05:34Speaker 4: And it was such a mystical.00:05:35Speaker 3: That's why I said it left such an impression on me as a child, because it was such a the not being was such a mystical thing, you know, smoke, fire, drums, singing, chanting and a whole spiritual vibe, you know. So yeah, you know, we go up in that kind of environment where every memory really is stuck with us, and the memory is stuck with us more than just a memory. It stuck with us as like I experience that has kind of molded us into who we are today. You know, is a It's a really heavy thing, you know, it's heavy.00:06:08Speaker 1: Yeah. The other part of it that's fastening to me, as I said earlier, was the Jamaica of that period, which is Jamaica in the seventies. So many of these photos are about Jamaica in the seventies, and Jamaican in the seventies is an intense place. I mean, politics is manly in Siaga, and there's violence, and there's gun court, and there's reggae and there's you know, don Quarry winning gold medal. I mean, it's just sort of like there's so I remember go there as a kid. It's just like so much. I was coming from rural Canada where nothing happened, to a place where everything was happening. Can you talk a little bit about that. I mean, you were in the epicenter of this because your father was at the was the kind of in the middle of the of the maelstream.00:06:55Speaker 3: Yeah, there were certain minor posts that I can like remember about the seventies, especially the more turbulent times the politics. So we can go back. I remember the night my appearents verse, right. I remember before my mom left to go to Ursus. I was like, yo, Mommy, take.00:07:14Speaker 4: Me to Earth.00:07:14Speaker 3: I wanted to go. I wanted to go to use and said no, like you have school tomorrow. And I was like very like angry that she never let me go to Ursers. And then, you know, looking back after the shoot, I think she probably.00:07:25Speaker 4: It was a good decision, right. So I remember that night.00:07:28Speaker 3: I remember she leaving and we went to bed, right, But in the middle of the night, some police came to the house and like grabbed us up and like there's a lot of you know, like chaos, and like let's go move, let's go, let's go get the kids them out of the house, and they drove us to.00:07:45Speaker 4: Wherever we were going. We never know. I was just like this, I was like, the fuck this year? What is seventy seventy six?00:07:53Speaker 3: But you're about geting the assassination seventy six y So Another more impacerful experience was with my mom. Actually we're talking about the seventies and what was going on there, the political upheaval and just you know, the drama and everything.00:08:06Speaker 4: So my some my mom pick us up from school.00:08:10Speaker 3: This was during the height of the there was a big protest going on political They were blacking the roads, fire burning, tires burning in the streets.00:08:18Speaker 4: So my mom picked us up from school in.00:08:20Speaker 3: The Beatle in the vub's driving us home and we come up on our road back.00:08:26Speaker 4: Okay, okay, I get home. We're not too far from home.00:08:28Speaker 3: But we can pass because these guys there, there's tires burning, and these guys are like and I remember being in a back seat and watching my mother.00:08:37Speaker 4: She came out of the car and she confronted these guys in a very bridge brave.00:08:41Speaker 3: I mean, it's brave what she did, like stand up and say, yo, know whatever I do. She cursed and she tacked them down, and they kind of like, okay, I'm kind of part part of the road back and we drove through. So that's that's another memory that's like from remember that time and the turbulent political situation. Those two mile posts is what I go back to but I mean there was good times to man, you know what I mean, I mean going back to change, don't playing football. You know, it was a very double edged sword that period of time because it was so good too.00:09:15Speaker 4: The vibe, the energy of the music.00:09:18Speaker 3: There's so much live and there's so much revolutionary like change, you know, like it's the same time Bob and Clyde muss Up, who was a strong man or a strong arm the political function and Bucking Marshall, they came together and were starting to kind of dis owned the politics.00:09:34Speaker 4: And I was there too.00:09:35Speaker 3: I met I met all of these guys take live and I knew, I knew what was happening, and I kind of but actually when I got later and I kind of understand who these guys were because I just saw them as guys, as Bob's friends, and I know they were meeting and talking and blah blah blah. But when I grew up, I realized these guys were some dangerous men. They weren't just like some love. These guys were some serious guys, you know. So that is yeah, that is the world.00:10:01Speaker 4: That is the world. You know.00:10:02Speaker 1: Back in the seventies, I remember funny you talk about your mother and that bla black. My grandfather telling me that he driving down the road and there'd be a roadblock, and he got really good at guessing whether it was j LP or pn P, the two two parties. So take a look. He's like, that's JLP wave. It is fished out the window j LP. They're like waving through the P and P. But you know, to your point, it's the world that burst this extraordiny amount of your father's music. I mean, it's what gave his music such immediacy and urgency and power. Did your father talk a lot about the cut of the politics of Jamaica?00:10:45Speaker 4: Not, I mean not to me.00:10:46Speaker 3: I mean I've heard, I've overheard stuff and i've you know, but never directed to us.00:10:50Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean he's spoken about it.00:10:53Speaker 3: Obviously, he's not a political person to say, well, decide these politics are that political party or whatever. I think he was because his thing was rastafar right, which is another thing. It's need a pn P, I JP. It's like it's all things. And what was happening was that all of the mentioned Claude Master, Boki Marshall, these were the strong arms. They were These were the enforces of the political party, the lead enforce us.00:11:19Speaker 4: These guys were coming over to Bob side.00:11:21Speaker 3: So there was a whole other thing going on that the political poets were losing their their muscle to this idea of RASTAFARII. And that was what bubb was really about, really if it, I mean, if if he was about politics, it was the political party of Rasta Farirai, which is a spiritual movement, you know, change, change how things are. So I think that was his politics. Rastafari was his politics.00:11:46Speaker 1: We could say, you know, yeah, I was trying to think whether there's another musical artist who has had the same kind of status in his or her home country as your father did. I mean, I remembering that famous concert where the two political figures of the day and manly didn't they shake hands on stage? Had had a Bob Marley concert.00:12:12Speaker 4: Yeah, the one loved Peace concert.00:12:14Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean, the analogy would be as if Donald Trump and Joe Biden had kind of hugged on stage at a Bruce Springsteen concert. Right, that's the that's the club I mean, But it doesn'ty, that doesn't even capture it. I mean, this is why I love the book so much because it takes us back to the time and the place. Yeah, there's wonderful photos of the One Love Concert with Siega and Michael Manley.00:12:41Speaker 3: Yeah, I remember that that was there. Me and my brother went on stage. That's what we usually do. Like me'am Stephen, my brother Steven, you would go on stage. We would go on stage in that last time, which is usually exodus those times was tough to the One Love Peace Concert. So I remember, let me.00:12:57Speaker 4: Let me.00:12:57Speaker 3: I don't think we're being afforded at that period. But when Bob after the assassination attempt and Bob I'd come home far the One Love Peace Concert, So we all went to the airport, and you know, there was totally enough people at the air because Bob's coming back. And the thing is that political strongmen for the parties, political parties now we're on the same page as Bob. And so everyone that supports these political parties now was supporting Bob and and and these these guys who know have their own ideas of peace and less political violence.00:13:29Speaker 4: So the airport was full.00:13:31Speaker 3: And then I was there and I remember the crowd and then pulled Bob and I'm there, I'm outside now in this crowd, all mixed up with everybody, and Bob get pulled into a car and I'm by the window like this, Why no, he pulled me through the window.00:13:50Speaker 1: Well you knew you got left behind.00:13:52Speaker 4: I got mixed up in the cow. It was like this crowd. No, there wasn't I had no nanny, r nobody watching me.00:14:01Speaker 1: It's important to remember in this moment in Jamaican history, it's almost like the country is in is instead of civil war, there is violence everywhere. You know, people are leaving Jamaica and droves to come to the United States or Canada to escape. It's a kind of a crazy period.00:14:18Speaker 3: But it's funny not only as civil wars, like a geopolitical work going on to at the same time between the United States and Russia and Cuba, because that was the old thing.00:14:27Speaker 4: That's why Edward Seaga he was a buston.00:14:30Speaker 3: He guarded from Boston University, and so there was the geopolitical situation.00:14:35Speaker 4: Even elevated the stakes even more.00:14:38Speaker 3: Yeah, and Bob, I mean, Bob wasn't a serious position and nobody knew, but he wasn't a serious position because of the geopolitical element. Would would America allow a socialist government who has ties with Cuba to have another, which would then mean Russia having a more influence in that region. You know, America didn't want and would not allow that. And now there was this guy, this singer guy who who people were drawn to, and he was like she had some politic got power too because the political strong men and their people are now drawn to this singer guy. Who's this singer guy, you know what I'm saying. So the states were really high beyond what I think we realized, or even Bob might have realized at the time. Are people around him you know.00:15:28Speaker 2: We'll be back with Malcolm Gladwell and Ziggy Marley after a break. We're back with more from Ziggy Marley and Malcolm Gladwell.00:15:39Speaker 1: Can you think of a musical figure who is analogous to your father?00:15:44Speaker 4: Yeah, I think more fella cute from Nigeria.00:15:48Speaker 3: Yeah, and him he was, you know, he was another one of my I met him once, not Chica, but he was he was serious. He was really, I mean what he did in in Nigeria standing up against the government, the brutality and the songs he.00:16:03Speaker 4: Wrote about that.00:16:05Speaker 3: Really, he just like my father assassination, and I mean they would read him and beat him and beat his mother and you know a type of things.00:16:13Speaker 4: So I felt it would be a good analogy to Bob.00:16:17Speaker 1: I think, yeah, yeah, And there are a couple maybe a couple of South African la maybe it would be a good analogy. But when do you become aware that you want to make your life in music? Is that something that comes to you very young and looking at your father or afterwards after his death.00:16:35Speaker 4: No, it comes, it comes before that.00:16:36Speaker 3: I mean the first concert we played, it was a concert that Bob wasn't It was the International year the children hear that was same to nine. So he and he wrote the first song that we have a song. So we was always music and Bob would always call us to sing when he's writing, it'll come sing.00:16:55Speaker 4: We're playing. We want to go play.00:16:57Speaker 3: He started telling us to come sing, you know, so we'll start very young with music. The thing I get from Bob musically speaking, is a discipline and the focus and the seriousness in which you approach the music. The respect that they gave the music. So you have to put in the work that shows you respect the music is not like it and you know, you have to sing the right No you ever practice, you know, so really when we used to see that and much about the Marrs, and I think for some reason I grew up taking that ethic of hard work and putting it into my own music of my life in general, you know, the exercise and or whatever.00:17:37Speaker 4: I think seeing him just you know, grining and like want to make it right.00:17:42Speaker 3: And the discipline, the discipline, you know said, the discipline is really is a strong impact on me seeing that discipline as growing up around that.00:17:53Speaker 1: Can you talk a little bit about the way he made music? I mean, was there was there a kind of an approach that a particular approach and can you can you give a loves of an example of how he worked and how he created?00:18:05Speaker 3: Well what I saw and this was probably in Miami at his mother's house. Yeah, but he always had this guitar around and a lot of time it's mumbling. You don't really it's not a song, you just hear ideas coming out.00:18:18Speaker 4: And for me, he would always have fun with it.00:18:22Speaker 3: It was never like a serious like writing and you know, it was like something very joyful in the process, was very joyful, unhappy, and people around and laughing and you know, you getting the lyrics making fun. There's this one, and I don't think you never did release this one.00:18:40Speaker 4: It was released. It's kind of like he.00:18:41Speaker 3: Did it as a demo real It's kind of like a really good time and.00:18:45Speaker 4: I don't remember him being in Miami.00:18:46Speaker 3: In his bedroom with his O Vision guitar and it was just having fun with you, having a real good time, you know, and people you know, I'm a smoke and split fun. It's just a good energy, just a good vibe, you know what it's like. And then you never hear what a sound complete. You only hear when it come on the record. You hear pieces of it, ideas of things you know, and then you hear a record. So you never I never him complete one song righting a song completely, you know, you always hear a little bits and pieces here and there.00:19:16Speaker 1: When your father became ill, was there a sense of urgency with him? Did his work take on a new kind of seriousness?00:19:26Speaker 4: No, he was always urgent from him.00:19:29Speaker 3: I mean he was urgent from the get go, because there are a few examples of that kind of energy of his urgency, of his work, ethic, of his determination. So he was in the band of Winners with with Bonnie and Peter, these three guys, right, they were in his band and obviously in a world code because a kind to what he said in an interview, it was like and said these words, he used my name. He says, if if you think when Ziggy wants to go to school that he can say, like he didn't want to work, he didn't want to do this what you know, so he wants to work, you know, he wants to get things done. There was always an urgency. There was never a lot of time. There was never a lot of time. There was always music. There was never and like all right, let me take a vacation, now, let my got chill out. Now there's no It was like thirty six I mean, how much in thirty six years of like pushing, you know, pushing it, pushing and pushing it, touring, never stopping, so that urgency of field was always there.00:20:30Speaker 1: Of all of his music, what are the songs that speak to you the most.00:20:34Speaker 3: The song that gets minimalist is a redemption song because I remember Shout of Empires.00:20:39Speaker 4: That was the album that was the album.00:20:41Speaker 3: That song was was the emotional spear, the emotional arrow. You know when you hear that song that in that time So that memory of that song I related to that time period and it was human his guitar. It's so it's so soulful and just the final thing is just Himan and guitar, and so that song always kind of have an emotional impart on me.00:21:05Speaker 1: Yeah, I want to know more about your childhood. There's a lot of moving around. Your family went to London right after the shooting, is that right?00:21:15Speaker 3: Yeah, but we we never got London, So all right, so chrenched down right Changtown where where I was born in Changstown. We grew up in a Changstone a little bit and then moved to Delaware, where his mother had moved I migrated to.00:21:28Speaker 4: So we lived in Delaware, Williamington, Delaware.00:21:30Speaker 3: I went to school elementary school in Delaware for maybe a year or so.00:21:34Speaker 4: Then we moved up to Jamaica.00:21:36Speaker 3: But we moved out out Trenchtone and move into a place called Bulby, which is a much better standard of living.00:21:42Speaker 4: It's like, you know, not poor, but not rich.00:21:45Speaker 3: It's like the middle class or something like that in Jamaica at the time. But it's funny within that middle class community when a mother lived. We were still with our grand aunt and it was like we had to walk up the road and up the hill and she was living in a poor a poor classhouse with no what I no tilet no nothing, so right within that middle class thing years right, If I went to my aunt, I was like I was another neighborhood. And so we would stay with her a lot of times because mommy and Daddy would go on tour and then we would have to stay with Granda Auntie in that house there.00:22:19Speaker 4: And then after that we moved to an upper middle.00:22:21Speaker 3: Class neighborhood now, and then after after my father passed Awa, my mother move us into a more upper class in the hills with a big house and lots of rooms and stuff like that. So yeah, that was the movement and it was fun as a child. Everything was a great learning experience, you know, this life with my family and my father and my mother and what they were going through.00:22:46Speaker 4: I was also learning from. At the same time, what's.00:22:49Speaker 1: It like going back to Jamaica now? Get mobbed walking?00:22:53Speaker 4: Do?00:22:53Speaker 3: I haven't been back in a while. Still about going back when I went back last time? Jam, I mean a lot, a lot has changed at another generation.00:23:01Speaker 4: A lot of the vibes that's changed, the old look has changed.00:23:04Speaker 3: You know, I'm a lot of more Americanization of Jamaica.00:23:09Speaker 4: But the country side is where the magic still remains. You know. The city, the city's side, I'm not so, I'm not.00:23:16Speaker 3: It's not when we when we were growing up in a city, it wasn't like a big metropolitan city. It was like a look a town and it was still had that vibe of like you're still in Jamaica. But no, it kind of the city kind of gets a little more hectic and so, but the country side is is still where it's. Jamaica has a vibe to it. You don't really get anywhere from me. You know, it's a very inspirational place if you find the right spot.00:23:43Speaker 4: You know.00:23:44Speaker 1: Yeah.00:23:45Speaker 4: Ian Fleming, he wrote this gens band stuff in Jamaica.00:23:48Speaker 1: GoldenEye, Golden Eye is written in Jamaica, new Port, Antonio. I think there's a there was a there was a house, he stated, Yes, that's right.00:23:58Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, so plenty inspiration.00:24:01Speaker 1: Yeah, it's easy to see why Jamaicans have such an inflated sense of their own importance because the whole world comes running very pro Yeah, I want to talk about some of the photographs that mean the most to you in this book. My first question was how many of these photographs did you take, our other family members take and how many of them are professional photographs?00:24:26Speaker 4: Well, I didn't, we never take any. These aren't all photographs. These are professional.00:24:32Speaker 3: There's there's his friend never who used to do his lighting and design his album or have some photos in there. But with the book, what we what I try to do is do a balance of those type of professional like iconic images and with more like images of you know, just in real life outside of the musician, outside of the stage, you know, show some bags, you know, show him beyond that, and for trying, as I said in the book, trying to make people even feel a deeper relationship to him. Because if you know someone just as you I can are as you as a as a musician, I mean a singer, then that's one we have done. But if he can't get a deeper understanding of his his life during that same period of time beyond that, then you can feel even more connected to the person and on that level.00:25:20Speaker 4: So that's what I was trying to do with the book.00:25:21Speaker 3: You know, but we never have unfortunate way at the time, we never readly a letter. You know, we never have cameras and we never have a camera. We never have my camera. Yeah, you know, photographers have cameras. We have cameras.00:25:35Speaker 1: With the process of going through all these photographs painful, what's the prop all kinds of memories.00:25:41Speaker 4: Yeah, no, but joyful, not painful.00:25:43Speaker 3: I mean melan Caliber Barby's at here and when you look at the photograph, he said, oh, what a young man.00:25:48Speaker 4: I'm fifty that I'm fifty two now.00:25:50Speaker 3: So when I look at him, He's like, look at this young guy, young kid, you know what I mean? Why you know, it's so that is a sad thing, but there's so much the joy overwegh that there's so much joy.00:26:02Speaker 4: I'm just looking at him and seeing him in that way were I know he was having a good time while he was doing it too.00:26:10Speaker 3: You know, he wasn't upsetaatey. He was having a good time. He enjoyed, he enjoyed his experience. You know, I said, so I feel happy about that that guy. I know he was having a good time doing it. You know, there's a photo we want to talk about the photo.00:26:23Speaker 4: Let's go to m pages ninety seven China and appeared ninety seven.00:26:27Speaker 3: If he can't come from it seems it seemed like at his home, in his home in the countryside. Oh yes, so this guy I used to we used to go to the country. This is the same time we used to go back with him on a trip. And this this is just the real Bob, you know, I said, this is and these are the people, this is where come from. These are his people, this is his roots. He was born on this land. And I mean, you can't see the guys he's coming to. He's either coming from the fielder going to the field, have some probably yeaman stuff in that crocus bag you have there.00:27:01Speaker 4: And everybody. I mean, Bubble was just one of the people. He was just one of them.00:27:06Speaker 3: And as you can see, and he's talking, he's eating a banner and antargions and some of the kids them, you know, and some of them have shoes on, some don't have shoes.00:27:14Speaker 4: On, and they're laughing.00:27:18Speaker 3: Well, you know, in communication with people, of good communication, skilling up with.00:27:23Speaker 4: People, and you know, yeah, and just having fun. He was en giant life. He's sitting and he's sitting on the stairs here on the next page of.00:27:31Speaker 1: The pictures is I mean he's so you can just tell how relaxing at Homie is.00:27:37Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, yeah.00:27:38Speaker 1: But at the time this photo is taken, he's at the height of his fame.00:27:41Speaker 3: Yeah, man, after the assassination at so this is yeah, he's at the height right here. And this is as you see this, he's leaning On the other page, he's leaning up on the VW van. This is so we had Mama had a beat her and he he would drive this VW van.00:27:58Speaker 1: I think those are the only two kinds of cars they were in Jamaica in those years, BW beatles.00:28:07Speaker 4: So yeah, and yeah, some of these people, some of them is his cousins too. There's a couple of cousins in here.00:28:14Speaker 3: This is at home. And then this is the last photo from that series. I think if you go to the next page, is him sitting down stealing sentence.00:28:23Speaker 4: But he's alone. His guitars on.00:28:25Speaker 3: The floor here on the ground right here, and he's he's barefoot also right there.00:28:29Speaker 4: This photon is like, this is Bob.00:28:33Speaker 3: I think Bob was always like Alona, and he always felt alone although he had so many people around him. This is Bob, this is him and his like, this is his meditation, this is him like in his space, you know what I'm saying, alone and just vibing. I felt like he felt like he was always alone in some way, you know, and this kind of represents that loneliness in a way.00:28:54Speaker 2: We'll be back with more from Ziggy Marley after this quick break. We're back with the rest of Malcolm's conversation with Ziggy Marley. As an added bonus, you'll hear the Live Talks Los Angeles moderator take questions from the audience at the end of Malcolm's interview.00:29:13Speaker 1: I love some of these group shots. There's there's on page fifty, there's this fantastic group shot with the band The Yes.00:29:21Speaker 4: All right, this photo was taken in in England. I was here. I was there.00:29:27Speaker 3: We were on the way to Zimbabwe. Are coming from Zimbabwe. That's why the next quota of me, if you look at next quota, this is England too.00:29:37Speaker 4: So this is this is the time period.00:29:38Speaker 3: We're there, right before Zimbabwe, are after Zimbabwe. We were in Yeah, and I went on the trip with him, and you know, football as usual.00:29:47Speaker 1: I had not realized the extent to which she was a soccer First of all, I know your son, but I want you to be honest. How good was he?00:29:57Speaker 4: That was good.00:29:58Speaker 3: I mean I remember you played against me when I was in you know, sometime of appearance versus. I was on the soccer team in elementary school and I remember he came. There was a peer versus you know, students, and you know, so he came and I was like, yeah, I marked this guy.00:30:13Speaker 4: I'm marked. I have this guy. I'll take him.00:30:16Speaker 3: But he was fast, which is good, and he had a good kick, and he had a good player.00:30:23Speaker 4: He was a good player. Cousin. He idolized soccer player.00:30:26Speaker 3: One of his good friends was Alan skillcoll who was like the top Jamaican player at the time, and they were good friends.00:30:32Speaker 4: So, I mean, he kept fit.00:30:34Speaker 3: He kept his workout was like a professional soccer player workout, you know. Abdomena was you know, running on the sand playing soccer like that was that was that was a workout. There's a soccer player workout basically. And his friends, all of his friends were soccer players. I could play soccer. He was drawn towards you know people like that, you know, but.00:30:55Speaker 1: Zig to be a fan of of Jamaican soccer. Is it exercise in masochism? It's like the I know this from my cousins. Nothing is more painful than this team that just loses and loses and loses.00:31:09Speaker 4: About the funny things. And we have some of the best players in the world.00:31:11Speaker 3: But I don't know, cause I think we had some great players, but we have the best runner.00:31:17Speaker 4: Well, you always have the best runners, the fastest runner.00:31:20Speaker 1: That's but that's been true forever. I want to talk a little bit about your own music, and you must have thought about you had this extraordinary gift, which is the gift of your father and his legacy, but it also presents a challenge to kind of carve out your own identity in that. How do you approach that?00:31:41Speaker 3: When I go back and look at my history, right, our family history, so we have musicians and artists on both sides of my family. A lot of people always talk about my father, and like I said, my mother was always key in in everything.00:31:55Speaker 4: My mother was actually a keen Bob's success. We don't my mother. Bob wouldn't be as successful. I wouldn't even have what he has.00:32:02Speaker 3: She was the one who reintroduced him, or introduced him to the Rastafara and culture, which had a big impact on him mentally and spiritually. She's the one who when they didn't have nothing, She's the one who gave him somewhere to sleep, and she was the one who slept on the floor with him in the studios, who sold records with him on their head, riding their bicycles through through the streets. She was the one who got shut in her head the same time he got shut in the hand, and still showed up for the concert when other people are like, no, we're not going.00:32:32Speaker 4: She still had a bullet in her head. So her impact on his legacy.00:32:38Speaker 3: And where we are is I always remember that too, you know, when I think about my what you just asked me about, you know, making my own way or whatever, I remember that what I have is that just coming from my father's, coming from my mother, her grandfather, her father.00:32:57Speaker 4: My grandfather was a saxophone player. My father and mother and.00:33:01Speaker 3: His family were all church people, singers, they're singing churches, and so the spirit there's you know, it's sides. And for me, yes, I understand the question of my father and his his wit or his impact on what it would mean to someone like me, are son of any person like Bob, and and how we kind of who we who choose to be in the same line, and we're kind of have to overcome whatever that thing is. So for me never really was on the forefront of my mind, and it was on the peripherals.00:33:37Speaker 4: And I heard it. I heard him thing and I heard it, but I never paid much attention to it.00:33:41Speaker 3: I started seeking a spiritual part when I was a teenager. Somebody who will mental see it was evolved beyond that because I was looking.00:33:54Speaker 4: And it's because of my father.00:33:55Speaker 3: I was looking, you know, because of his spirituality led me into search for my spirituality.00:34:03Speaker 4: And so for me, I was with past.00:34:06Speaker 3: My ego of trying are thinking about are putting that pressure and myself to live up to the legacyr to make my own name or make my own way.00:34:17Speaker 4: I don't need to make my own way. I just need to be myself.00:34:20Speaker 3: That will that will solve all the problem that I will solve the problem that people is asking a question about.00:34:25Speaker 4: I don't need to like try to do it. I just need to be true.00:34:30Speaker 3: And then that that is what that's is, how it really is, and I also need to accept, and I do accept.00:34:35Speaker 4: That my father is a part of me.00:34:38Speaker 3: There's gonna be similarities, there's gonna be things that is like, you know, it's like Bob, you know what I mean. So we're not trying to this this this stands to ourself from him in that way either. So there's no that's suld that doesn't exist because I don't want to distance self from him because I am a part of him.00:34:56Speaker 4: Anyway.00:34:56Speaker 3: You cannot do that. He has a sound car running away. You're running away, but you can't run away from yourself, you know what I said. So that is how I That is how I really try. That is how I I when I analyze it myself after being asked that question, that is how I see myself having dealt with it in that way, you know.00:35:15Speaker 1: And yeah, yeah, no that's beautifully but yeah, well thank you, Ziggy. I think we have some questions. Ted is that right? But this is like I said, the book, The book was so lovely and took me back to so many kind of wonderful memories of that era in Jamaica and at a real thrill to talk to you about.00:35:37Speaker 5: It me too, same thing, all right, Thank you, Malcolm. The first question, Ziggy is have you been to Ethiopia and can you say something about your connection and your father's connection to Ethiopia.00:35:52Speaker 3: Yeah, we were in Ethiopia years back to celebrate I think it was a sixtieth or one of those birthdays above. Because obviously Ethiopia and it's history, we found a strong connection to the Rastafari culture. It's a deep story because as and I've probably catt it shot living in Jamaica during the times of after independence or you know where supposedly everywhere or whatever, the Christian faith and the faith that was forced upon us by the colonists was something that a sector of you know, Jamaican started to turn against, like, you know, this is a slave master thing.00:36:33Speaker 4: You know, white God.00:36:34Speaker 3: Why Jesus is a white guy with blue eyes and blah blah blah.00:36:38Speaker 4: Whereas who do we identify with?00:36:41Speaker 3: And so Marcus Gather really started the whole conversation and this and and said some stuff. You know, when Marcus that all black thing and the black oe and you know, your black identity, that was a strong inspiration. And then when Rastafari start using the same Bible that was given to them by the colonists to now interpret it in a way that put an emphasis on this king in Ethiopia as the real as the comment of another christ like individual in that philosophy. In that in that idea, a lot of people in Jamaica found are real independence, a full break from the colonialist not only the political independence, but the mental independence. And that was the rise of the Rastafarire culture and the connection with each opera with this king, who within the Bible is still represented because he is a lineage of King Solomon, and in the Bible say he will come again with the name King of Kings Ladah, lad.00:37:44Speaker 4: Can canna travel Judah.00:37:46Speaker 3: And this was the title that this man, this manner has And so that strong connection to Ethiopia is fort to that because Exodus in a barbad alum called Exodus, and Exodus obviously is a relation to the struggle of the israel people coming over of Egypt. And so we are a strong connection with that whole thing, with David and Salomon, and so Rasta far I come through that connection with its last I as I descend that of Solomon and Sotopia. Ittopia was a big It was like Jerusalem or Mecca, or whatever. You know that was Ethop was like that for for Rastafari culture.00:38:26Speaker 5: So your siblings have crafted their own music careers. The question or asks what is the relationship between your siblings both musically and and how you relate to each other today?00:38:41Speaker 3: So we grew up, all right, So we grew up, let's come back, or we grew now because it's very important because all right, my father was married to my mother, but he had children of a wed right because obviously the wed like thing is a colonial thing, and we don't deal with colonial things, you know, we are free or whatever. So that was my father's you know philosophy. After you learn things, they need us free yourself anyway. But so we always grew up.00:39:07Speaker 4: You know, when my.00:39:08Speaker 3: Father would take us to visit, like I'm the oldest son, right, so he would take me and sometimes my brother Stephen. You know there's a new there was a new baby or a new you know. He would drive us to the house where my brother, my other brother was who was not of my mother, and you know, he would visit and we would meet you came on here, meet Robbie and meet Rowan or whoever it was. And my mother now which is the most important part of this was always she was like the mother of all of them, like she was the mother of the children who she wasn't the mother of basically, so everybody would come to us, and you know, my mother would be the one who kind of take care of children, whether it was his child or not.00:39:53Speaker 4: And she is the one whenever.00:39:55Speaker 3: She never taught us to like be like vindictive our head for our reasentful of my father or of the other children. In no way, we were just one family. So that's all we that's the lesson we have learned. Nobody nobody told us that you shouldn't like that guy because he's not your mother's son.00:40:11Speaker 4: We never learned that. So that's all we still are today.00:40:15Speaker 3: We get together every now and again, but we have such a strong connection that we don't have that emotion, that deep emotional sadness are like oh I missed my thinger, oh my brother or something like that.00:40:27Speaker 4: You know, we never grew up that way.00:40:28Speaker 3: We grew up a little bit let's emotional, I would say, So we don't have that in us. But we do have a connection and I love for each other and I respect for each other. We never fight each other whenever you know, we'll understand each other, and everybody understand each other. So that's how we live musically. Me and my brother Steve, and we share a lot of music them man. Steve is the one who nurtured they man. We nurture each other music basically each of us. I helped Steve when he was young, Steve his younger brother, and we just keep nurturing each other.00:41:01Speaker 4: So that's how it is.00:41:03Speaker 5: A final question has to do and there are several people who ask questions about musical collaboration. Is there anyone you would have liked to see your father have collaborated with that he did not get to And how do you feel about musical collaborations?00:41:18Speaker 4: Who would you like to collaborate with?00:41:21Speaker 1: No?00:41:21Speaker 3: Musical collaboration is a good thing, right In some ways it is expanding each of the artists's reach to other audiences, which is good. It is showing a true example of unification in a way where it can be two different types of music blending together to bring to make something new. I'm a very shy person, so I don't like to ask people for a thing. I don't really like to ask people, you know, like hey, can you do this?00:41:51Speaker 4: You know?00:41:52Speaker 3: So I'm very shy like that, But for some reason this year, during the COVID thing, I've done the most collaborations I've ever done in ten years, which is very strange. It's a very interesting time for me. And how those come about, Well, the first colors that I did last year was from my kids album, and I think when I the children music, I find it's a have a different state of when I do the other type my other music.00:42:21Speaker 4: I don't know.00:42:22Speaker 3: Somehow I feel more more comfortable with asking somebody to do some for children music, and it has something to do with that we have a charitable element to it, and so I'm much more comfortable doing that.00:42:37Speaker 4: So I did.00:42:37Speaker 3: I did a few big collaborations with Ben Cheryl Crow, Alanis Morissett, Angelie Kid, Joe, tom Morello, Busta Rhymes. So my kids album other like a bog of collaboration, which we really enjoy doing. And how I work with collaboration is that we have a connection. It can just be like a corporate deal, it can be like, you know, just have a contractual relationship with it has to be something real, and that is why I haven't done a lot of collaboration, but a lot of these artists that are on that album I've done for years. We've done music together. You know, we talk and we text her or whatever. So that's how I like to do collaborations.00:43:18Speaker 4: For Bob. I can't respect late and that I do. I don't want to spect it.00:43:22Speaker 3: And that Bob, you know, he was in a collaborative band, the way as he collaborated Petere and Bonnie and I know Steven and that gentleman stage. I think the collaboration and there was also what's his name came back? See what's the beatle of guy name? George Harrison. So I feel like bob collaboration collaborational spirit was one where if he was on stage and somebody wanted to come up, he would welcome them up, collabor He's a he's a social person, come on up and seeing don't I'm not sure about record and I don't know about that, and there's no way I can't imagine it.00:43:58Speaker 4: I can't respect it on that.00:44:00Speaker 5: Well, thanks for joining us, Ziggy Marley, and thank you Malcolm glad Well for chatting with Ziggy.00:44:06Speaker 4: All right, malcom times man, take care see if guys.00:44:09Speaker 1: Pleasure Zicky Bye Bye.00:44:13Speaker 2: Thanks to Ziggy Marley for sharing so many fascinating details about his life with Bob.00:44:19Speaker 1: The book he.00:44:19Speaker 2: Curated, Bob Marley Portrait of the Legend, is available now and to hear a playlist of our favorite Bob and Ziggy Marley songs, check out the playlist we created at broken Record podcast dot com. Be sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel at YouTube dot com slash broken Record Podcast, where you can find extended cuts of new and old episodes. You can follow us on Twitter at broken Record. Broken Record is produced to help from Leah Rose, Jason Gambrel, Martin Gonzalez, Eric Sandler, and Jennifer Sanchez, with engineer and help from Nick Chafey. Our executive producer is Mei Lobel. Broken Record is a production of Pushkin Industries and he liked the show. Please remember to share, rate, and review us on your podcast app Our theme musics by Kenny Beats. I'm justin Richmond, Peace00:45:09Speaker 4: Skip the pin