Ziggy Marley Reminisces About Jamaica and His Father

00:00:15 Speaker 1: Pushkin. In the four decades since his death, Bob Marley has become so iconic that it's hard to believe he was ever a real person. Thankfully, in addition to the wealth of music he left behind, there's also a trove of photographs documenting his brief, impactful life. In twenty twenty, to commemorate what would have been Bob's seventy fifth birthday, Ziggy Marley curated a book of photographs of his dad called Bob Marley Portrait of the Legend. Ziggy has of course gone on to become a reggae icon in his own right, and there's now an eight time Grammy winner, a philanthropist, author, and keeper of his dad's legacy along with the rest of the Marley family. Today we'll hear Malcolm Goldwell and Ziggy talk about the turbulence and seventies Jamaica by two opposing political parties. Ziggy recalls the night gunman and ambushed the Marley house, shooting his mother and Bob, both whom thankfully survived, and Ziggy answers the question we all want to know, was it famously soccer obsessed Bob Marley really any good on the field? This is broken record liner notes for the digital Age. I'm justin Richmondon. Here's Malcolm Gladwell and Ziggy Marley. This conversation was taped live as part of the Live Talks Los Angeles series. 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 as Jamaican, and when I was growing up in the seventies, we were good at 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, HiT's personal for me too. You know how when you look at the photo of Jamaica, you can smell Jamaica. I could, I could smell I could smell Jamaica again. It's just lovely, like took me back to my childhood. What led you to want to do this book? 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 see a Bob our iconic photographs, you know, obviously the iconic images, and so for this we came up on the same 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 we having our archives. I'm put together a photo book. The family has them. I've done one before, other people have done one. Then I'm totally understand. Always when you're taught about you smell Jamaica at the photo because doing the book like they brought back to that time too, you know, when 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 phot does it you know, everything else kind of came back to me. 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 council where you're all sat down and went through them? No? No, well I was given a task. I was given that responsibility of going through the photos. That's all we do. What kind of delegate responsibilities? Yeah, you know, everybody this is your project. You have you have the family's approval and blessing is your project. Go ahead and do it, you know. 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. Yeah it going on thirteen. Yeah, yeah, tell me tell me a little bit about what you remember of your father. Well everything, I mean, there's don't to forget really because the limited experience we've had with him, you know, everything was memorable and left her ever lasting impact on my psyche, you know what I say. Everything. It was like going to school, but a different type of school, you know. Manna says like so growing up with Bob, I mean, there was different elements. It was a fun side, happy side, didn't player on the children. We would travel to the countryside his hometown u every now and again. And it's funny remember those days. They were no seat, bess, he would have been a lap in the front seat or seat that no, no, no, you're back. Yeah, I believe you. I remember that. I'mbing started making the back of a Volkswagen Beetle driven by my uncle. Yeah. Yeah, my mom one of those two. She had one of those beatles too. Yeah yeah, so um but I mean, and then there was a serious side. It was what I saw was another discipline. This money, a lot of work hard, this money, a lot of discipline, this manner. He's from the countryside and he's so rude rooted in his humility that for him to come back to his home Toner, go back to trench Stone in the ghetto, it was like, it's just it's just Bob. This is just Bob. It's not like Bob the Superstarabob or whatever, you know, It's just Bob. So I mean lots of sucker, lots of football, sucker music, sucker music. And the spiritual side of it was a very powerful thing. And Babbabo's love having Bible, and he would take me and my brother Stephen to these um what you call him. It's like service, like you know people go to church service, or people go to the synical or the mosque. When we are these thing called nia bingis and we would it would be like some weird time at night. And it was such a mystical. That's why I said it left such an impression on me as a child, because it was such a ni being was such a mystical thing, you know, smoke, fire, drums, singing, chanting, and a whole spiritual vibe. So yeah, you know, we'll go up that kind of environe 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 as kind of mounded us into who we are today. You know, who is are really a heavy thing, you know, it's heavy. Yeah. The other part of it that's fastened 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 Jamakaan the seventies and Jamaica the seventies is an intense place. I mean, politics is manly in Siaga, and there's violence, and there's gun cord and there's reggae, and there's you know, Don Quarry winning gold medal. I mean, it's just sort of like there's somber go, there's a kid. It's just like so much was coming from rural Canada where nothing happened, to a place where everything was happening. Talk. Can you talk a little bit about that I mean you're in the epicenter of this because your father was at the was the kind of in the middle of the of the Maelstrom. Yeah, there were certain minor posts that I can like remember about the seventies, especially the more um turbulent times politics. So we can't go back. I remember, um, the night my appearance were a shot, right. I remember before my mother left to go to rearses, I were like, yo, moment tapent to earth. I wanted to go. I wanted to go to resta and said no, one, like you have school tomorrow. And I was like very like angry that she didn't let me go to rearses. And then, you know, looking back after you the shooter, I think she probably it was a good decision, right. So I remember that night. 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 kiosk and like let's go move through, let's go, let's go get the kids and mout to the house and they drove us to wherever we're going. We don't know. I was just like this, I was like, what is seventy seventy six, but you're about getting the assassination the seventy six ye. So another more impactful experience I 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 everything. So my so, my mother pick us up from school. This was during the height of the There was a big protest going on political They were blocking the roads, fire burning, tires burning in the streets. So my mom pick us up from school in in the beetle, in the VW. She's driving us home and we'll come up on a road back. Okay, okay, I'll get home. We're not too far from home, but we can't pass because these guys there, there's tires burning, and these guys are like and I remember being in the back seat. I'm watching my mother. She came over to the car and she confronted these guys in a very bridge brave. I mean it's brave what she did. She like stand up, I say, yo, and I feel you know what if I did? She cursed or chel and she talked them down and they're kind of like okay and kind of part of part of the road back and we drove toe. So that's a that's another memory that's like from from member that time and the turbulent political situation. Those two my post is what I go back to. But I mean there was good times too, man, you know what I mean. I mean going back to Change Stone playing football. You know, it was a very double edged sword that period of time because it was so good too divide the energy of the music. There's so much life and there's so much revolutionary like change, you know, Like it's the same time Bob and Claud mass Up, who was a strong man or a strong arm for the political function and booking Marshall, they came together and we're starting for kind of this on the politics. And I was there too. I met I met all of these guys take life, and I knew who. I knew what was happening um and 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 with area as these guys were some dangerous men. They were just like some la. These guys were some serious guys, you know. So that is yeah, that is the world. That is the world, you know, marking at the seventies. I remember, it's funny you talk about your mother and that roadblock. My grandfather telling me that he'd be driving down the road and they'd be a roadblock, and he got really good at guessing whether it was JLP or p NP, the two two parties. So he take a look, he's take that's JLP. Wavers fished out the window JLP. They're like waving through next BNP. But you know, to your point, it's the world that bursts this extraordinar 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? Not, I mean not to me. I mean I've I've overheard stuff and i've you know, but never directed to us. Um. Yeah, I mean he's spoken about it. Obviously, he's not a political person to say, well him decide these politics are that political party or whatever. I think he was a trait because his thing was Rastafari, which is another thing. He says, need a P and p r GP. It's like it's own thing. And what was happening was that I love the mentioned cloud, the master of Bocking, Marshal. These were the strong arms, they were, These were the enforcers of the political party, the lead enforcers. These guys was coming over at the Bob side. So there was a whole other thing going on that the political powers were losing their their muscle to this other idea of rastafar Rai, and that a waso bubble was really about really if it, I mean, if if he was about politics, it was the political party of Rastafari, which is the spiritual movement, you know, change, change how things are. So I think that was his politics. Rastafari was his politics. 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'm remember that famous concert where the two political figures of the day, Siaga and Manly didn't they shake hands on stage at a at a Bob Marley concert, Yeah, the One Love Peace concert. 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 clothes, I mean, but it doesn't need 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 Siaga and Michael Manley. Yeah, I remember that it was brother went on stage because that's what we usually do. Like me, I'm Stephen, Stephen, you would go on stage. We would go on stage in that last time, which is usually exdus those times was tough to the One of Peace concert. So I remember, let me let me. I don't think we're having the photos that appeared. But when Bob after that assassination attempt, and Bob had come home for the One of Peace concert, so we all went to the airport and you know, there was totals of people at the airport because no Bubo is coming back. And the thing is that political strongmen for the parties, political parties now we're on the CMPH 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. So the airport was full. 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 bub bub Why not he pulled me through the window. Well, you knew you got left behind. I got mixed up in a cart and it was like there's could no and there was no one. I had no nannier and no one body watching me. It's important to remember in this moment in Jamaican history, it's almost like the country is in a state of civil war. There is violence everywhere. You know, the people are leaving Jamaica in droves to come to the United States or Canada to escape. It's a kind of a crazy period. Well it's funny, not only as civil war is like a geopolitical world going on too at the same time, between the United States and Russia and Cuba. Because that was the thing. That's why Edwards Siaga he was a buston. He guarded from Boston University, and so there was the geopolitical situation even elevated the stakes even more. Yeah and Bob, I mean, Bob was in a serious position and nobody knew, but he was in a serious position because of the geopolitical element. Would would America allow a socialist government who has tied with Cuba to have another which would then mean Russia having a a more influenced in that region. You know, America didn't want that. I would not allow that. I know. There was this guy, this singer guy who who people were drawn to and he was like she had some political power too, because the political strong men and their people were no drawn to this singer guy. Who who's this singer guy? You know what I'm saying. So the stakes are really high beyond what I think we realized, or even Bob might have realized at the time, our people around him. You know. We'll be back with Malcolm Gladwell and Ziggy Marley after a break. We're back with more from Ziggy Marley and Malcolm Gladwell. Can you think of a musical figure who is an analogous to your father? Yeah? I think more Fella Cut from Nigeria. Yeah, and him he was. He was another one of my I met him once, um chica, but he was he was serious. He was really and I mean what he didn't in Nigeria starting up against the government, the brutality and the songs he wrote about that. Really he just like my father had assassination and m I mean they would read him and beat him and beat his mother and you know type of things. So fella co would be a good analogy to Bob, I think, yeah, yeah, And there are a couple maybe a couple of South African um 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? Now it come? It come before that. I mean the first concert would play was a concert that U Baba was on was the International Year of the Children, what I hear? That was seventy nine. So he and he wrote the first song that we have a song. Yeah, So we was out of his music and bab always call us to sing when he's writing it. It comes sing we're playing, we want to go play, telling us to come sing. You know. We started very young with music. The thing I get from Barba musically speaking, is a discipline and the focus and the seriousness in which you approach the music, the respect that you gave the music. So you have to put in the work that shows you respect the music. It's not like it does better and you know you have a sing the right now, you have a practice, you know. So really when we used to see that Rorstie and watch Bob the Mirs, and I think for some reason I grew up taking that ethic of hard work and and and putting it into my own music of my life in general, you know, without they exercise and or whatever. I think seeing him just you know, grinding and like, well I'm making it right. And the discipline, the discipline, you know said the discipline is really a strung impact. I mean is seeing that discipline as as growing up around that. 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 approaching. Can you can you give a lovess of an example of how he worked and how he created? Well what I saw and this was probably in Miami at his mother's house. Yeah, but he always had his guitar around and a lot of time it's mumbling, you don't it's not a song. He does her ideas coming out, And for me, he would always have fun with it. It doesn't like I see us like writing and you know, it was always like something very joyful in the process, was very joyful and happy and people are own and laughing and you know, did you getting the lyrics? Making fun? There's this one another one thing he remember did release this one. It was really this kind of like he did as a demo. Really it's kind of like a really good time and I remember him beating in Miami in his bedroom with his Ovision guitar, and it was just having fun with you in a real good time, you know, and people you know, I'm a smoke split fun. It's just a good energy, just a good vibe. You know. I'm that says like And then I you never hear when the sound compete. You only hear when it come on the record. You hear pieces of with ideas of things, you know, and then you hear a record, So you never I never really him compete one song writing a song completely. You know you're already here a little bit sent pieces here and there. When your father became ill, was there a sense of urgency with him? Did his work take on him a new kind of seriousness? No, he was always urgent from him. 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 Win that with with Bonnie and Peter the Street guys. Right, they were in his band and obviously have a world code. Because occurring to what he said in an interview is like and him said these words, he used my name, he says, if if you would think when Ziggie wants to go to school that he can say blah black. He didn't want to work, He didn't want to do this what you know, So he wants to work, you know, he he wants to get things done. There was always an urgency. There was never a lap time. There was named a lap time. There was always music. There was never and the like all right, let me take a vacation, No, I let me go chill out. No, there's no. It was like thirty six I mean how much year in thirty six years of like pushing you know, pushing and pushing and pushing it touring, never stopping, so that urgency fee was always there. Of all of his music, what are the songs that speak to you? Do most? The song that gets minimost redemption song? Because I remember shout haf Empass that was the album that was this album. That song was was the emotional spear, the emotional arrow. You know when you hear that song like that in that time it so that memory of that song I related to that time period and it was him and his guitar. It's so it's so soulful and just the final thing is just Himan guitar, and so that song always kind of have an emotional impact on me. Yeah, I wanted 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? Yeah, but we we never got to land on so all right, So chrenchedtwne right changedtone where I was born in Chrenstone. We grew up in a chrenchedtone look a bit and then moved to Delaware where his modad moved I'd migrated to. So we lived in Delaware, Willimanton and Delaware. I went to school elementary school in Delaware for maybe a year or so. Then we'll move back to Jamaica, but we'll move out a chrenchedtone and moving to a place called Bulb, which is a much better standard of living. It's like, you know, not poor, but not rich. It's like the middle like middle class or something like that in Jamaica at the time. But it's funny. Within that middle class community where my mother live, we would 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 class house with no water and no toilet, no nothing. So right, we didn't that middle class thing. There's right. If I went to my aunt, I was I was like I was in 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 grand and Auntie in that hose there. And then after that we moved to an upper middle class neighborhood now and then after after my father passed up, when mother moved us into a more upper class in the hills with a big hose and uh, lots of rooms and stuff like that. So yeah, that was a movement and we 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. I was also learning from. At the same time, what's it like going back to Jamaica now? Let down? I haven't been back in a wire is still about going back when I went back last time? Jamaica? I mean a lot, A lot has changed another generation, A lot of the vibe has changed, the oldlook has changed. You know. I'm I'm a lot of more americanization of Jamaica. But the countryside is where the magic still remains. You know. The city, the city's side, I'm not so, I'm not. It's not a when we when we were growing up in a city. It wasn't like I met a big metropolitan turn city. It was like a little town and it was still had that vibe of like you're still in Jamaica, but no it kind of city kind of get a little more hectic, and so what the countryside is still weird. It's Jamaica has a vibe to it. You don't really get anywhere ees for me, you know, it's a very inspirational place. Um, if you find the right spot, you know. Yeah, yeah, Fleming, he wrote his ga bund stuff in Jamaica. Golden Eye, Golden Eye is written in Jamaica. Well, and I new pot Antonio. I think there's a there was a there was a house he state at. Yes, that's right. Yeah, yeah, so plenty inspiration. Yeah, it's easy to see why Jamaicans have such an inflated sense of their own importance, because the whole world comes running very very Yeah. We'll 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? Well, um, I didn't, We didn't take any. These aren't all photographs. These are professional. There's there's this friend never who used to do his lighting and designed his album, or don't have some photos in there. But with the book, what we what I try to do is um do a balance of those type of professionals 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 bad you know, show him beyond that and as I said in the book, try and make people even feel a deeper relationship too, because if you know someone just as your eye can are as you as a as a musician, I mean a singer, then that's one we have known him. But if you can't get a deeper understanding of his life during not seeing period of time beyond that, then you can feel even more connected to the person and that level. So that's what I was trying to do with the book, you know, but we never, unfortunate way at the time, we never really do a letter. You know, we never have cameras and we never have a camera. We never have a camera. Yeah, you know, photographers have cameras. We don't have cameras. With the process of going through all these photographs painful, what's the brought back all kinds of memories, yah know, but joyful not painful. I mean melan Calibo barbers are here. And when you look at the photograph and say, oh, what a young man, I'm fifty I'm fifty two, knows so when I look at him, he's like, we get 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 overwear that. There's so much joy. I'm just looking at him and seeing him in that where where I know he was having a good time while he was doing it too. You know, he wasn't upstad he was having a good time. He enjoyed, He enjoyed his experience, you know what I mean. I said, So I feeling happier about that guy. I know he was having a good time doing it. You know, there's a fart we want to talk about the four Let's go to the p ninety seven China ninety seven. If you can't come from it seemed it seemed like at his home, in his home in the countryside. Yes, so this guy I used to we used to go to the country to him. This is the same time we used to go back with him and a chip and this this is just a real barb. You know, I'm gonna said, this is and these are the people, This is where Bob 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 field. I go into the field him have some properly yea my stuff in that crocus bag you have there, and everybody. I mean, Bubba is just one of the people. He was just one of them. And as you can see, and he's talking, he's eating a banner and I'm talking to some of the kids them, you know, and some of them have shoes and some do have shoes on and they're laughing subab well, you know, in communication with people, of good communications skill with people, and you know, yeah, and just having fun. He was an entry in life. He's sitting and he's sitting on the stairs here on the next page over their pictures, is I mean he's so you can just tell how relacs and at home he is. Yeah, yeah, yeah, but at the time this photo is taking, he's at the height of his fame. Yeah, man, after the assassination at him. 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, leaning up on the v W Van. This is so we had my mother had a beat her and he he would drive this v W van. I think those are the only two kinds of cars they were in Jamaica in those years, Vans and VW Beatles. So yeah, and yeah, some of these people. Some of them his cousins too. There's a couple of cousins in here. This is at the home and then this is the last further from that series. I think, um, if you go to the next bit, is him sitting down still in sentence, but he's alone, his guitars on the floor here on the ground right here, and he's he's beer foot also right there. This fortune always like, this is Bob. 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 he's like, this is his meditation. This is him like in his space, you know what I'm saying, alone and us vibing. I felt like he felt like he was always alone, um in somewhere, you know. This kind of represent that lundiness in a way. 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. I love some of these group shots there's there's on page fifty there's this fantastic group shot with the band. Yes, all right, this fourth done was taken in in England. I was here. I was there. Oh really we were I underway to Zimbabwe. Are coming from Zimbabwe. That's why the next quarter of me, if you look at next quarter, this is England too. So this is this is a time period. We're there, um right before Zimbabwe. Are after Zimbabwe. We were in. Yeah. And I had went on the trip with him, and you know, football as he was. I had not realized the extent to which she was a soccer First of all, I know you're a son, but I want you to be honest. How good was he? That was good. I mean I remember he played against me when I was in um, you know, sometimes an appearance versus I was on a soccer team in elementary school and I remember he came. There was appearance versus you know, students, and you know, so he came and I was like, yeah, I'm marked this guy. I'm marked. I have this guy. I'll take him. Um. He was fast, which is good. Yeah, and he had a good kick and you're a good player. He was a good player, man, because he he id alized soccer player. One of his good friends was Alan Skillicode, who was like the top Jamaican player at the time, and they were good friends. So I mean he kept fit, he kept his workout. Was like a professional soccer player work card. You know, I've dominas, you know, running on the sand playing soccer like that was that was That was a work called there's a soccer player work called basically, and his friends, all of his friends were soccer players. I could play soccer. Yeah, he was drawn towards you know, people like that. You know, but Ziggy, to be a fan of Jamaican soccer, is it exercising masochism. It's like the I know that from my cousins. Nothing is more painful than this team that just loses and loses and loses. No, but the funny And we have some of the best players in the world. But I don't know. I think we had some great players and um, but we have the best runner. You always have the best runners, the fastest runner. That's all. But that's been true forever. Um. 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 and that how have you approached that? 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 legas and my mother was also key in um in everything. My mother was actually a keen. Bob's success wet my mother, Bob wouldn't be as successful. I wouldn't even have bod he has. She was the one who reintroduced him or introduced him to the Rassafara and culture, which had a big impact on him mentally and spirituality. 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 heads, riding their bicycles through through the streets. She was the one who got shut in her head the same time he got shut in her hand, and still showed up for the concert when other people are like, no, we're not going. She still had a bullet in her head. So her impact and his legacy and where we are is I always remember that too, you know, when I think about my um, what you just asked me about, you know, making my own way or whatever, I remember that what I have is that just coming in from my father's, coming from my mother, her grandfather, her father. My grandfather was a saxophone player. My father, mother and his family were all church people, singers, they're singing churches, and so the spirit there there's you know, so it's both sides. And for me, yes, I understand the question of my father and his wit or his impact and what it would mean to someone like me or a son of any person like Bob, and and how we kind of who we who choose to be in the same line of where kind of have to overcome whatever that thing is. So for me never really wasn't the forefront of my mind, and it wasn't the peripherals. And I heard it. I heard him thing, and I heard it, but I never paid much attention to it. I started seeking a spiritual part when I was a teenager. So my whole mentors see it was if I've being that because I was looking and it's because of my father. I was looking, you know, because I've his spirituality led me into search for my spirituality. And so for me, I was were past my ego of trying are thinking about? Are putting that persure and myself to leave up to the legacy, are to make my own name or make my own way. I don't need to make my own way. I just need to be myself. That will That will sound all the problem that I would start, the problem that people is asking a question about. I don't need to like try to do it. I just need to be true and then that that is what that is all it really is. And I also need to accept and I do accept that my father there's a part of me. There's gonna be similarities, There's going to be things that is like you know, it's like Bob, you know what I mean. So we're not trying to this um this stand to ourself from him in that way either. So there's no that's child that doesn't exist because I don't want to self from him because I am a part of him. Anyway, you cannot do that. Yeah, that sound car running away, you're running away, but you can't run away from yourself. You don't mess. So that is the way. That is howhy I really try. That is howhy I when I analyzed it myself after being asked that question, that is how I see myself. I've been dealt with it in that way, you know. And yeah, yeah, no, that's beautifully part. 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 it's a real thrill to talk to you about 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. Yeah, we were in Ethiope our years back to celebrate I think it was a sixth tieth one of those birthdays are Bob. Because obviously Ethiopia and it's history. We found a strong connection to true um, the Rastafari culture. It's a deep story because and I've probably living in Jamaica during the times of after independence, you know, where it's a post slaveryhere or whatever. The Christian faith and the filth that was forced upon us by the colonist was something that a sector of you know, Jamaica and started to turn against, like, you know, this is a slave master thing. You know, why God, why Jesus is a white guy with blue eyes and blah blah blah. Whereas, oh, who do we identify with it? And so Marcus Gather really started our whole conversation and this someone and said some stuff. You know, when Marcus was black thing and the black one 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 know, interpret it in a way that put an emphasis on this king in Ethiopia as the real as the common of another christ like individual in that philosophy, and that in that idea, a lot of people in Jamaica found are really independence, a full break from the colonialist not only the political independence, but the mental independence. And that was a rise of the Rastafaria culture and the connection with Ethiopa, with this king who within the Bible is still represented because he is a lineage of King Salomon and in the Bible say he will come again with the name King of Kings, Lord of Lord, Cankernana Tribal Judah. And this was the title that this manner, this manner has And so that strong connection to Ethiopia is far true that because Exodus, you know Barbad Alum called Exodus, and Exodus obviously is a relation to the struggraph is the israel people coming over to Egypt. And so we had a strong connection with that whole thing, with David and Salomon and um. So Rastafari come through that connection with its last i as a descent that of Salomon, and so Eupia was a big It was like oh um, Jerusalem or Mecca or whatever, you know, Yeah, that was it was like that for for Rastafari culture. So your siblings have crafted their own music careers. Um, the questioner asks, what is the relationship between your siblings both musically and and how you relate to each other today? So we grew up, all right, So we grew up. Let's come back home. We grew no. Because it's very important because all right, my father was married to my mother, but he had children with a wedlock, right, because obviously the wedlock is a colonial thing, and we don't deal with colonial things, you know, we're free or whatever. So that was my father's you know philosophy. After you learned things, they need us free yourself anyway. But so we always grew up, you know, when my father would take us to visit, like I'm the oldest son, right, so he would take me and sometime 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 host where where my brother, my other brother was who was not of my mother, and you know, he would visit and we would meet, you know, came on here, I meet Robbie or meet Roan 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 a 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 bob children, whether it was his child or not. And she is the one whenever she never taught us to like be like vindictive, our head full, our reason full of my father, are of the other children in no way we were just one family. So that's how we that's the lesson we have learned. Nobody. Nobody taught us that. Or you shouldn't like that guy because he's not your mother's son. We never learned that. So that's all we still are today. We get together every now and again, but we have a such a strong connection that we don't have that emotion, that deep emotional sadness are like oh I missed my thing or my brother or something like that. You know, we never grew up that way. We'll go up a little bit less emotional, I would say. So we don't have that in us. But we do have a connection um and a love for each other and I respect for each other. We never fight each other whenever, you know, we'll understanding each other and everybody understand each other. So that's how we live. Musically, me and my brother Steve, and we share out of music Demon. Steve is the one who nurtured Demon. We nurtured each other music basically, each of us. I hope Steve when he was young, Steve that his younger brother, and we just keep nurturing each other. So that's how it is. Final question has to do and there are several people who ask questions about musical collaborations. 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? Who would you like to collaborate with? No? Musical collaborations are good thing right? In some ways it is expanding each of the artists 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 a thing. I don't want to really like to ask people, you know, like hey can you do this something? You know? So I'm very shy like that. But for some reason this year, UM, 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, um and how those come about. Where the first collaborations that I did last year was from my kids album, and I think when I the children music, I find it's a different a different state of mind. When I do the other other music. I don't know. Somehow I feel more um more comfortable with asking somebody to do something for children music, and it has something to do with that we have a charitable element to it, um, and so I'm much more comfortable doing that. So I did. I did a few big collaborations with Um being harp Sheryl Cruel, Alanis Morris said, Angelie Kidjo, Tommarella, Bust Rhymes. So my Kids album over like a bag of collaboration, which we really enjoy doing. And how I work collaboration is that we have a favorite connection. It can just be like a corporate deal. It can't be like, you know, just have a contractual relationship. It has to be something real. And that is why I haven't done a lot of collaboration. But all of these artists that are on that album I've done for years. We've done music together. You know, we talk and we take or whatever. So that's how I like to do collaborations. For Bob, I can't speak of late and that I do. I don't want to speak later. And that Bob, you know, he was in a collaborative band the way as he collaborated Peter and Bonny and I know, Um, Stephen won the Johnleman stage. I think the collaboration and there was also what's his name came back sage what the beatle dynam George Harrison. So I feel like, um Bob collaboration, collaborational spirit was one where if he was on stage and somebody wanted to come up, he would well come them up. Collab. He's a he's a social person, come on up and seeing. I don't nature about caught in. Um, I don't know about that, and there's no way I can't imagine it. I can't have a speak of it on that. Well, thanks for joining us, Ziggy Marley, and thank you Malcolm Gladwell for chatting with Ziggy. All right, welcome times, Well take care, let see if guys. Thanks you, Zicky, bye bye. Thanks to Ziggy Marley for sharing so many fascinating details about his life with Bob. The book he currated, 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 Records produced Helpful Lea Rose, Jason Gambrel, Martin Gonzalez, Eric Sandler, and Jennifer Sanchez, with engineer and help from Nick Chafee. Our executive producer is miil Bell. Broken Record is a production of Pushkin Industries and if you like the show, please remember to share, rate, and review us on your podcast. To app our theme music spect Kenny Beats, I'm justin Richmond Peace