Rita Marley was born in Santiago de Cuba in July of and came with her family to Jamaica when she was a toddler. She grew up in Greenwich Town and met Bob Marley in the early s when she was a singer and manager of the Soulettes, the group that later became the i-Threes.
She wanted it to be a monthlong celebration of what would be his 60th birthday. The area in which she wanted to bury him was a Rastafari community that was given land by the country's last emperor, Haile Selassie.
She claimed to have the backing of the Ethiopian government and said "We are working on bringing his remains to Ethiopia.
It is part of Bob's own mission. Ethiopia is his spiritual resting place. With the 60th anniversary this year, the impact is there and the time is right.
Rita has six children, two from other relationships and four with Bob. Bob adopted Rita's two children as his own and they have the Marley name. Bob has 14 children in total: the two of Rita's that he adopted, four born to Rita, and the remaining eight with separate women. Rita's children are, in order of birth:. Rita Marley, Hettie Jones Hyperion, ISBN The celebrations are a reminder of the hurdles and challenges Marley faced. She also had to grapple with a double whammy: trying to be a woman in power in both the male-dominated music business and the male-dominated Rastafarian world.
The man is gone. And no one wanted her to be. They wanted her to shut up and be a widow and let them all run it the way they thought it should be run. Before the MeToo movement, she did it, with people wishing she was dead.
As women in this business, it hits home for us. It is in working to overcome them that we grow strong. She was born Alferita Anderson in Cuba, and her parents moved to Kingston, Jamaica, when she was three months old.
After her parents separated, she was raised by an aunt. She studied as a nurse and sang in church, and before long was in a vocal group. It was through that group that she met Robert Nesta Marley, who had already cut a slew of singles with early versions of the Wailers.
It was Rita who also introduced her husband to Rastafarianism. The two married in Rita was the only person who could sing the melody with Bob. I wanted to preserve and protect that in one central space.
Rita played so many different roles. She was responsible for making sure that Bob was okay on tour. She would get rid of all the people who were there just hanging out in the room. She was very stern and was always on top of it all. That was one of the things Judy and I admired about her. She was a true, natural-born leader. Rita knew what she wanted.
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