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Bob Marley and the love for football
KINGSTON (Jamaica): 'Fire in Babylon', the cinema experience that takes you back to the glory days of Caribbean cricket, also borrows heavily from other cultural and social values that prevailed in these islands. Naturally then, reggae, the reggae king and the ultimate Rastafaarian from here - Robert Nesta Marley - plays a huge role.
'Buffalo Soldiers' identifies with the suffering of the 'Black', 'One Love' stands for Bob asking the world to become one stage, 'I Shot the Sheriff' plays when Clive Lloyd's team returns from Australia following the tour of '76.
"You know what I mean..." says Marley in the background, his heroic stature valued here for what he made so famous of the Rasta, as famous perhaps as the fierce cricketing pride that Vivian Richards stood for. In the movie, they both go hand in hand - reggae and the cricket.
But as is the case with a movie script, Marley's mention in the movie does not spill over into real life, especially when you arrive at his home here in Kingston, which has been turned into a museum by his wife Rita and some years ago was acknowledged as a heritage site.
The minute you enter the gates here, Marley and his love for football engulfs you. Unlike the movie on cricket which depends on the legendary singer's crooning of the Rastafaarian to provide the needed effects, "Marley's real life passion -- other than his music and the herb - was football," says Damian, one of the caretakers and guides here.
Inside the compound of his two storied home, where he shifted after his album 'Exodus' - starring Bob Marley & the Wailers which became a raging hit - the music icon demarcated various spots within the compound and inside his house where he would keep himself busy with his various interests. There's a corner which is kept aside for a weatherbeaten truck he bought in exile.
"I never liked the BMW. The BMW was pure trouble," says the plaque here. There's another corner where grew the 'herb' and rolled it away to glory. Where he recorded, played with his children, and got shot by assailants.
But the largest area is kept aside for football - a game he would indulge in regularly with his friends. "Bob was never the cricket fan. He loved the football," says Bunny Wailer, Bob's longtime partner who still lives in Kingston, in one of his quotable quotes about the legend's sporting interests.
The museum plays a 20-minute movie on Marley, in which among other things he wishes that "some day the Blacks, Whites and Chinese, all should live together"; where he says that "the herb revealed him to himself"; he also talks about his love for football.
"It brings a lot of joy, you know what I mean..?" says Marley. And then he's shown playing on the screen. Looking at his skills, you get to know what Bob Marley the sportsman was.
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