'One Love' unites musicians

The music and the message of Bob Marley transcend time and space. No matter where you go all over the world, his legacy lives on. For the past four years, Playing For Change has traveled from streets and villages to mountaintops creating songs and searching for inspiration. The "One Love (2009)" video featured on BobMarley.com is a collaboration of over 35 musicians from all over the world. This song unites people of different races, genders, religions, economics and political views.

Our path for recording "One Love" started with Roberto Luti playing a national steel guitar. He had recently lived through Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans and the feelings of loss and hope seemed to resonate through him.

We then traveled to the township of Umlazi, South Africa. We drove to a small home serving as a rehearsal space for the choral group Sinamuva. Tucked in this small room were ten of the greatest souls I had ever met rehearsing for the "One Love" track. They were singing the choruses in Zulu!

This proved to us the power of Bob Marley's message can be expressed in any language. While in Africa we found singer-musician Mermans Kenkosenki, from the Congo. Kenkosenki expressed how Marley helped him stay inspired regardless of the tragedies around him. You can hear the perseverance in his voice during the first verse of the video.

Our crew then traveled to Dharmsala, India, the home of the Dalai Lama. I remember walking down the street and seeing a small record shop with a CD display mostly consisting of Tibetan albums. When I looked closer, I could see Marley's Legend, right in the center!

Bob Marley has paved the way for global connection and mutual understanding everywhere. Millions of people throughout the world continue to sing and hear the words, "Let's get together and feel alright." Words to live by.

One Love,
Mark Johnson
Playing For Change

Bob through the years

The life and times of Bob Marley are captured here in color and black-and-white photos covering the legendary musician's career, from exciting performances onstage to the pensive moments in private.

Burning Bob questions?

Whether you're curious about Rita Marley's favorite Bob and the Wailers song, what the tour poster from the "Uprising" tour looked like or what the story is behind the main character in "Mr. Brown," we have Marley experts on hand to find the information you seek. Send us your questions and we'll reply to a new one each month. (photo: Glen LaFerman)

HIS STORY

Bob Marley was a hero figure, in the classic mythological sense. His departure from this planet came at a point when his vision of One World, One Love -- inspired by his belief in Rastafari -- was beginning to be heard and felt. The last Bob Marley and the Wailers tour in 1980 attracted the largest audiences at that time for any musical act in Europe.

Bob's story is that of an archetype, which is why it continues to have such a powerful and ever-growing resonance: it embodies political repression, metaphysical and artistic insights, gangland warfare and various periods of mystical wilderness. And his audience continues to widen: to westerners Bob's apocalyptic truths prove inspirational and life-changing; in the Third World his impact goes much further. Not just among Jamaicans, but also the Hopi Indians of New Mexico and the Maoris of New Zealand, in Indonesia and India, and especially in those parts of West Africa from wihch slaves were plucked and taken to the New World, Bob is seen as a redeemer figure returning to lead this.

In the clear Jamaican sunlight you can pick out the component parts of which the myth of Bob Marley is comprised: the sadness, the love, the understanding, the Godgiven talent. Those are facts. And although it is sometimes said that there are no facts in Jamaica, there is one more thing of which we can be certain: Bob Marley never wrote a bad song. He left behind the most remarkable body of recorded work. "The reservoir of music he has left behind is like an encyclopedia," says Judy Mowatt of the I-Threes. "When you need to refer to a certain situation or crisis, there will always be a Bob Marley song that will relate to it. Bob was a musical prophet."

The tiny Third World country of Jamaica has produced an artist who has transcended all categories, classes, and creeds through a combination of innate modesty and profound wisdom. Bob Marley, the Natural Mystic, may yet prove to be the most significant musical artist of the twentieth century.