Thursday 26 December 2013

Marley



Bob Marley The Movie from sim power team on Vimeo.


Marley is probably the most inspirational musician documentary/movie I've seen since Oliver Stone's The Doors. 

I had very little idea about Bob Marley, and even though I've been to Ethiopia on business I still couldn't understand Rastafarianism after Googling it in the days before Wikipedia. 

I'm particularly impressed with the ideals of fitness and independence and Bob Marley's fierce competitiveness in everything he did, from football to music.

This documentary isn't the most linear edited narrative I've come across, but what it lacks in funding (it's been made on a shoestring) it makes up for, with first hand story telling that really conveys a sense of who he was and what he was about it. 

I've linked to researcher interviews about the CIA's probable spiking of Bob Marley with cancer through a poisoned football boot, but if you want to hear the first hand testimony (thinly disguised) about the episode you can jump to here.

Bob Marley's Rastafarian locks became to heavy to carry as he became ill, but even if that didn't work the chemotherapy would have meant them falling out. This is for me the obvious choice of cancer rather than say a bullet as for John Lennon through MKLUTRA mind controlled victim Mark Chapman.

Bob Marley was starting to shake things up  in Africa, just as he became sick, including playing a part freeing Rhodesia from White Rule through his music.  

If there is going to be a renaissance of the human spirit, Africa is more likely to play the first move, rather than the hollowed out consumer lifestyles of the Western world. 

That's my gut instinct.