singer; reggae musician; curator
Personal Information
Born Alpharita Constantia Anderson in 1947, in Cuba; married Robert Nesta (Bob) Marley, 1966; children (with Marley): David (Ziggy), Cedella, Stephen, Stephanie, Sharon, and Serita.
Religion: Rastafarian.
Career
Began performing, mid-1960s; joined trio, the Soulettes, and recorded with Bob Marley as producer; performed in Bob Marley's backing trio, the I-Threes, 1970s; released solo debut, Who Feels It Knows It, 1981; became curator of Bob Marley Museum, Kingston, Jamaica; released We Must Carry On, 1990.
Life's Work
Perhaps best known as the widow of reggae legend Bob Marley and often called the "Queen of Reggae," Rita Marley has spent time and energy as the guardian of his estate and musical legacy, and, more important, as the keeper of the flame of his ideas. But her role in the history of Jamaican music has not been limited to her family relationship with Bob Marley. In the mostly male-dominated field of reggae, she was a solo act of note before she ever joined with her husband musically, and she emerged as a successful artist on her own after his death. Moreover, as part of Bob Marley's backing trio of female vocalists, the I-Threes, Rita Marley was an important contributor to the music that made her husband famous worldwide.
Rita Marley was born Alpharita Constantia Anderson in Cuba in 1947. Growing up poor, she was raised in the Trenchtown neighborhood of Kingston, Jamaica, that spawned the careers of many of the musicians who created a rhythmically complex, spiritually inclined new music called reggae. Three of those musicians, who had formed a trio called the Wailers, often passed by the metal shack where Rita Anderson was living with her aunt and small child. The Wailers consisted of Bob Marley, Peter Tosh, and Bunny Wailer; they were among the first acts to record at the influential studio of producer Coxsone Dodd. Bob Marley, already a standout talent, made a special impact. "I remember how I would scream to hear his songs on the radio," Rita Marley told Interview.
Proposal on Paper
An aspiring singer herself, Rita asked the group to set up an audition with Dodd for her. The 18-year-old singer succeeded at the audition and was joined with two other young women in a trio called the Soulettes--with Bob Marley as their producer. The Soulettes scored several hits under Marley's leadership, and what was at first a purely professional relationship took a new turn one day when Bunny Wailer delivered to Rita Anderson a handwritten love note from Bob Marley. The two married in 1966. Rita Marley had a solo hit of her own, "Pied Piper," and also sang backup on some of the early recordings of the Wailers.
Marley influenced her husband in what became the central spiritual tenet of his music--the Jamaican variant of Christianity known as Rastafarianism. It was she who turned out for a personal appearance by Ethiopian emperor Haile Selassie--thought by Rastafarians to be the returned Jesus Christ--and noticed marks on his hands that she believed were the nail scars left by Christ's crucifixion. Marley, a former Sunday school teacher, converted to Rastafarianism and induced her husband to do the same. One of the recordings that would really launch his fame as a solo artist and bandleader in the early 1970s was "Jah Live," an anthem written after Selassie's death.
For that record, Bob Marley assembled another backing trio, dubbed the I-Threes and consisting of Rita Marley, Judy Mowatt, and Marcia Griffiths--all of whom would go on to important solo careers. The I-Threes evolved into a fundamental component of the reconstituted Bob Marley and the Wailers, which, over the course of the 1970s, forged an internationally popular music that featured a language of its own that expressed Rastafarian concepts, a distinctive look featuring the twined strands of hair known as dreadlocks, and a political side that looked to the eventual overthrow of the white elites who ruled the peoples of the African diaspora.
Wounded at Home by Gunmen
With Bob Marley and the Wailers, Rita Marley and the I-Threes toured the world, appearing as far afield as newly independent Zimbabwe. In 1976 the Marleys became victims of Jamaica's notoriously violent political culture; they were shot in their home by gunmen two days before performing a benefit concert for a socialist-oriented political party. Both were wounded, but still performed--Rita in her hospital gown. The I-Threes also appeared on their own, and Rita Marley was making plans to release a solo album when Bob Marley died of brain cancer in 1981, at the age of 36.
After her husband's death, Marley went ahead with plans to release the album, Who Feels It Knows It. Far from being a funeral dirge lamenting Bob Marley's death, the album showcased Rita's musical personality. It contained a comic piece about marijuana, "One Draw," which was banned by radio stations due to a passage in which a schoolteacher instructs her students in the enjoyment of the drug. The controversy fueled sales of the album, and Marley went on to record two more successful albums in the 1980s; they were released in the United States on the roots-oriented Shanachie label. The 1990 album We Must Carry On, which included several previously unknown Bob Marley compositions, was nominated for a Grammy award. She has also contributed backup vocals to albums by other artists ranging from West African reggae star Alpha Blondy to Haitian-American rapper Wyclef Jean.
Rights to Estate Contested
Much of Marley's energy in the 1980s, however, was devoted to the care of her husband's legacy in various ways. Bob Marley died without a will, and associates from several phases of his career came out of the woodwork to contest the Marley family's rights to his estate, valued in the tens of millions of dollars. The resulting litigation went all the way to the Jamaican Supreme Court, which ruled in Rita Marley's favor in 1991. Legal activity continued through the 1990s, however. Marley produced several albums by her son Ziggy Marley and his band, the Melody Makers, and worked successfully to promote the group's career.
She also cared for all of her husband's other ten children, several of which he had fathered with other women, and is even said to have cooperated with U.S. director Ron Shelton, who wrote a script for a warts-and-all treatment of Marley's life. "He was a good boy, still is, and that's why we have to carry on his mission," Marley explained to the Guardian of her work as head of Kingston's Bob Marley Foundation, which operates a museum devoted to the singer's life and work. "He was a father figure for me," she told the Guardian. "He saved me from being somebody else. I could have been prime minister, I could have been a prostitute on the streets, but I am what I am and Bob has a lot to do with that."
Works
Selected discography
- Who Feels It Knows It, Shanachie, 1982.
- Harambe, Shanachie, 1983.
- We Must Carry On, Shanachie, 1990.
Further Reading
Books
- Contemporary Musicians, volume 10, Gale Research, 1993.
- Billboard, July 6, 1991, p. 8; November 28, 1992, p. 10.
- The Guardian (London, England), October 30, 1996, p. 13; August 2, 2000, p. 4.
- Interview, January 1995, p. 88.
- Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, January 22, 1999, p. Cue-5.
- People, November 19, 1984, p. 221.
- The Plain Dealer (Cleveland, Ohio), October 20, 2001, p. E1.
- All Music Guide, http://allmusic.com.
- http://reggaetrain.com.
— James M. Manheim
