Marley, Ziggy

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ZIGGY MARLEY

Born: David Marley; Kingston, Jamaica, 17 October 1968

Genre: World

Best-selling album since 1990: The Best of Ziggy Marley and the Melody Makers (1988–1993) (1990)

Hit songs since 1990: "All Love and Live," "Power to Move Ya," "People Get Ready"

David "Ziggy" Marley is the oldest son of reggae superstar and activist Bob Marley, the man who first brought Jamaica's reggae music to international attention and popularity. Because of Bob's early death and his son's close physical and vocal resemblance, Ziggy came to be seen as successor to his father's larger-than-life legacy.

Unlike his father, who grew up in the stench and danger of a Kingston ghetto, Marley grew up in privilege as the son of a man who was already a Jamaican institution. Yet Marley was in the house the night in 1975 that his parents were wounded by gunfire in an assassination attempt, and he saw several of his father's associates end up as victims of Jamaica's political violence.

More pleasant childhood memories include learning how to play guitar and drums from his legendary father, performing with him onstage, and accompanying him on road trips, including a journey to Zimbabwe to help fight racism there. Nicknamed "Ziggy" after the David Bowie album The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders (1972), Marley, along with his siblings Stephen, Cedella, and Sharon, even recorded "Children in the Streets" (1979) with Bob Marley and the Wailers when he was ten years old. The song was a reworking of "Children in the Ghetto" (1975); the profits went to the United Nations Children's Emergency Fund. When young Marley saw a cover story on his father in Melody Maker magazine, he assumed that the moniker was a description of his father rather than the publication, and the children's own group came to be known as the Melody Makers.

Although Bob Marley did not want his children to have to deal with the pressures of the music business, they did perform at family functions, including their father's own state funeral after his death from cancer at the age of thirty-six in 1981. Their debut album, Play the Game Right (1985), and its follow-up, Hey, World! (1986), received little promotion or airplay, and when the label, EMI, wanted Marley to go solo, the Melody Makers switched labels rather than break up the family act. Conscious Party (1988) was produced by husband-and-wife team Chris Frantz and Tina Weymouth of Talking Heads and included guest performers Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones, Jerry Harrison of Talking Heads, the Ethiopian band Dalbol, and the cast of the Broadway musical Sarafina! The clever kaleidoscope of styles and Marley's socially conscious yet tuneful songwriting ability spun off the hit singles "Tumbling Down" and "Tomorrow People." The album One Bright Day (1989) proved to be a successful follow-up.

Although Melody Maker records were never as popular in the 1990s as they had been in the late 1980s, the albums remained interesting, innovative, and energetic and saw the group mature and continue to cross-fertilize a wide variety of styles that turned many Bob Marley fans and hard-core reggae lovers against them. Drenched in the same Rastafarian faith that nourished the spirituality of his father, Marley's song lyrics are often politically motivated, dealing with themes of freedom and injustice.

In 1996 more than 300,000 people crowded into New York's Central Park to hear Ziggy Marley and the Melody Makers and other Marley family members pay tribute to Bob Marley. After two decades as the leader of the three-time Grammy Award–winning Melody Makers, Marley released his adventuresome debut solo album, Dragonfly, (2003), to considerable critical acclaim but also to the virtual astonishment of his fan base. Not a reggae album as such, the raw power of Dragonfly allowed Marley the artistic freedom he obviously had been craving.

Marley has both benefited by and been damned for his ancestry. Those who see and hear his late father in his music may be drawn to him at first, while those who listen more closely attack him for not staying true to his father's musical ideals. The criticism is a familiar one—Bob Marley was initially attacked by purists when he began adding elements of British and American rock and pop to the reggae that he performed.

SELECTIVE DISCOGRAPHY:

Dragonfly (Private Music/RCA, 2003). With Ziggy Marley and the Melody Makers: Conscious Party (Virgin, 1988); One Bright Day (Virgin, 1989); Time Has Come: The Best of Ziggy Marley and the Melody Makers (Capital re-release, 1990); Jahmekya (Virgin, 1991); Joy and Blues (Virgin, 1993); Free Like We Want 2 B (Elektra/Asylum, 1995); The Marley Family Album (Heartbeat, 1995); Fallen Is Babylon (Elektra/Asylum, 1997); Marley Magic: Live in Central Park at Summerstage (Heartbeat/Tuff Gong, 1997); Arthur and Friends (Rounder, 1998); Spirit of Music (Elektra/Asylum, 1999); Ziggy Marley and the Melody Makers Live, Vol. 1 (Elektra/Asylum, 2000).

BIBLIOGRAPHY:

G. Hausman (ed.), The Kebra Negast: The Lost Bible of Rastafarian Wisdom and Faith from Ethiopia and Jamaica, introduction by Z. Marley (New York, 1997).