SATISH SHARMA - not just Rotigraphy.: Redemption Songs: One Love, One Heart

Thursday, February 06, 2020

His last "more than brave" performance in Pittsburgh. Photo by Adrian Boot

For a break from the madness, and to honor a much-missed voice these days, we mark what would have been the 75th birthday of the great Bob Marley - reggae legend, devout visionary, fighter for the rights of the oppressed and fervent believer that "righteousness someday prevail." Marley' died of cancer at 36, an incalculable loss the more you know of his life and work. Still, his music and message of resistance live on.

Thursday's birthday launches a year-long celebration of his legacy dubbed BobMarley75; as a first installment, his estate released a stirring, animated new video to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the emblematic “Redemption Song” from Marley’s final album Uprising, issued the year before he died. Created by French artists Octave Marsal and Theo De Gueltzl, the video features nearly 3,000 original drawings representing Marley's message of the journey to emancipation: "None but ourselves can free our minds." Marley also sang the song in Pittsburgh in September 1980 in his last public appearance; given he'd newly learned he was dying, it was a "more than brave" performance. May he rest in peace and power.