This week I was reminded that even when you’re worried that the threads that connect you have somehow frayed, your connection to where your parents came from still holds a strong grip on you. I did. That memory came in the form of Bob Marley, one of the most iconic and influential Jamaicans of all time.
I grew up in a house where his records were frequently played. His music and life were widely discussed there. I had the opportunity to walk through his home in Jamaica, which is now a museum. But as the child of Jamaican-born immigrants, I think I underestimated the pride I felt for a man who died a year after I was born. Bob Marley remains a ubiquitous figure in many of our lives.
For someone with no ties to any part of the world, it can be hard to believe that emotions can be triggered by a place you’ve never lived in, but whose culture has always been a part of your life. But that is the case for so many children of immigrants living in the UK.
Even the most outwardly sensible person can have a hard time understanding this issue. A while back, in a conversation about the connection I feel to the country of my parents’ birth, an acquaintance accused me of being offensive to “real” immigrants. He was surprised that Jamaica remained important in my life. To him, it was foolish for England not to meet all of me.
His views probably had white supremacist overtones behind them, but were clearly nonsense. But it really hurt and it stayed with me. When the opening scene started, I remembered that conversation. Bob Marley: One Love, a biopic coming out later this month, I saw it at a preview screening. It shows the production process of what has been called the most important album of the 20th century. Exodus.
I already knew that the filmmakers had chosen to keep the island’s Patois language undiluted, neither Americanized nor Anglicized, and had decided to refrain from using subtitles. But it took my breath away to see so much care put into a big-budget movie about Bob that shocked the world. It hit me hard. It told the story of Jamaica, for Jamaicans, through the prism of Jamaicans. It’s not to appease foreign viewers.
It reminded me that although I was not born in Jamaica, I was raised wholeheartedly in Jamaican culture, created in its blood, and that it is part of my every being. It was timely. Regardless of whether the aforementioned acquaintances agree with me or not, I will always have an inseparable relationship with that small island.
So, as I watched Bob and Rita Marley’s story unfold on screen, I couldn’t be prouder to be a Jamaican. What they accomplished against all odds back then is as amazing as ever. The legacy that his family has worked so hard to preserve is also remarkable.
The film’s dichotomy between the beauty of Jamaica’s landscape, Bob’s voice, and the violence and power struggles on the island’s streets struck me. It was a reminder that the Jamaicans who managed to succeed did so with the burden of colonialism, the environment, the violence, and the poverty in which they grew up on their shoulders.
But they also demonstrated the beauty and pure joy of music that is still influential more than 40 years later.
My aunt and I left the movie theater with these lyrics: Exodus Although this country is small compared to others, its enormous influence still rings in our ears, along with our continued pride in the country. Why on earth would people separate themselves from that pride?
This morning, my daughter Florence and I danced to “So Much Things to Say” while getting ready for nursery school, and I’m writing this with “Turn Your Lights Down Low” blaring from my laptop. Now I too (metaphorically) make rude gestures towards people who say my pride is wrong.
Charlene White is a presenter on ‘ITV News’ and ‘Loose Women’