Learning About Bob Marley: The Music and the Man

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There are few things in this word as universal as the music of Bob Marley, as universal and as beloved.

But have you ever stopped and wondered why? Why just the opening riffs of songs like “One Love,” “Waiting in Vain,” or “Could You Be Loved” have the power to make anyone who hears them start to smile and sway no matter how they were feeling before the music started.

Vivien Goldman — writer, broadcaster and post-punk musician – has some definitive ideas on the subject dubbed “The Punk Professor” by the BBC, she teaches on punk, reggae, and Bob Marley at NYU’s Clive Davis Institute of Recorded Music, Tisch School of the Arts. She also worked at Island Records as Marley’s PR person for seven crucial months during which he recorded “No Woman, No Cry,” the song that boosted his career to another level.

“Bob Marley is one of those rare musicians whose music means as much as the lyrics,” Goldman said in an interview with Color Magazine. “Musically, he wanted his songs to be very accessible; he wanted to make songs that a child could sing as well as an adult. Then, once he had you hooked with the melody, he knew he could make you listen to what he had to say.”

After leaving Island, Goldman became a music journalist and continued working with Marley as his chief chronicler outside Jamaica. The Book of Exodus: the Making and Meaning of Bob Marley and the Wailers’ Album of the Century reveals a hidden yet crucial period in Marley’s life and music. Exodus focuses in great detail on the arc of Marley’s story between the politically motivated attack on his life in 1976, and his triumphant return home to Jamaica in 1978 for the One Love Peace Concert. Goldman’s book is acknowledged to be the most personal, as she was his trusted storyteller. She stayed at his Kingston home right before gunmen broke in; was in the studio with him in Jamaica and Britain while he recorded Smile Jamaica and Exodus; and traveled with him on the road.

Goldman will be joining the Berklee Bob Marley Ensemble in an evening of music and spoken word titled So Much Things to Say on Jan. 28. And although she teaches a course in Marley and his music, Goldman stressed that her night with the ensemble will not remind anyone of a classroom. “His music is such a celebration of his life and I want to help people make that connection, but I’m not there to lecture anybody,” she said. “I just want to add some depth to his songs that they might not know about, something to make them think about the man the next time they hear his music.”