By Graham Reid
Summertime a few years ago and I am walking in the Blue Mountains west of Sydney. Around the corner come two Maori guys who greet me with eyebrow flashes and a hefty, "Kia ora."
We run down a quick exchange: "Do you live here?" "Nah, just over for a
few days ..." And so on.
Finally I ask: "How d'you know I was from New Zealand?"
"The T-shirt, bro," says one through hooded eyes and with a knowing smile.
It wasn't the first time my "Dread Lion: Bob Marley" T-shirt had attracted comment in Australia.
In that golden decade between Johnny Nash's Stir It Up in 71 (written by Marley incidentally) and the day in late May 81 when the Marley funeral cortege made its way through the streets of Jamaica, reggae largely went past Australians.
Sure, reggae bands played there and Marley was acknowledged as the High Priest of Herb.
There were even aboriginal reggae bands like No Fixed Address. But there was nothing like the deep consciousness of reggae as there was here, or recognition of Marley as a spiritual, philosophical and musical figurehead.
And nor was there in the States, where Marley hadn't really broken through despite a strenuous tour in 78 which saw him fill Madison Square Garden. His final Stateside tour opened with two shows with the Commodores, an attempt to take him into mainstream consciousness. But it was not to be.
Like Bob Dylan, Lou Reed and Patti Smith, Marley never sold that many albums in his lifetime, but his influence was always greater than his record sales.
In Britain he was always well known but today, outside of black culture and white dance floor, it's more as a poster icon, like Che Guevara as Marijuana Messiah.
But here he has been revered. Marley was always big among Maori and Polynesians and it doesn't take a great deal of social analysis to guess why. His was a voice for the politically and financially disenfranchised and the socially oppressed. Yet he stood for dignity, spoke with eloquent simplicity ("get up, stand up, stand up for your rights") and celebrated life and spirituality. His albums were alternately political and party time. He denied racism and loved kids.
Out of that complex convergence you can see why he held great appeal.
That he had a broad-based Pakeha audience is more knotty but his acceptance - outside of those who simply saw him as legitimising dope smoking - suggests a much greater common ground of shared aspiration and understanding between Maori and Pakeha than some would have us believe.
Marley articulated racial harmony at a time when others would divide us from within for their own agenda.
This weekend Marley would have been 54, and for the past five years the annual One Love Unity Celebration in Auckland has acknowledged the birthday of this reggae legend.
And it's possible to see in that Waitangi Day celebration an alternative view of our nation. We make our celebrations about the things which mean something to us and the One Love Unity Celebrations have been the biggest Waitangi Day events in the country.
It is a cross-racial family day and a celebration of unity on our national day which has been most often marked by confrontation.
The irony is that this year there will be no major One Love Unity Celebration.
The event has become too popular.
Chris Fowlie, of the Catalyst Creative Collective which - with the National Organisation for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (Norml) - presents the event says the popularity of the day in the Domain was pulling too big a crowd.
Two years ago an estimated 15,000 turned up and he admits they were unprepared for such a number. It also attracted a few of the alcohol persuasion who brought a bad attitude and left behind bottles and broken glass.
So last year the event was shifted to Carlaw Park but the stadium was a heat trap and lacked atmosphere. It also cost them $30,000 and for a non-profit, free event relying on a koha it was too much of a financial risk. (He does note however that they came within $100 of breaking even, a testament to the generosity of the 10,000-strong crowd.)
Because of the popularity of the event it now requires a large park and an infrastructure of security and clean-up crews. Fowlie says it isn't difficult getting a number of smaller supporters but they now need sponsorship in the $20,000 to $30,000 region.
Traditional big business sponsors of large events view it as just another concert and the 50:50 split between Maori and Polynesian people and Pakeha doesn't seem to appeal.
So this year the event has been temporarily reduced to a Powerstation concert featuring the Unity Band, the Managers, Dub Asylum, Dunedin's Zuvuya, the Mighty Asterix and others.
The idea is to create a concert that can be charged for, says Fowlie, and to use whatever profit they make as seeding money for a millennium year celebration - they hope at Bastion Pt - which will include international reggae acts.
It's a further irony that Bob Marley has been downsized here, for he is getting bigger internationally.
Since his death there have been posthumous albums, compilations and a box set and numerous biographies, the most significant being Timothy White's Catch a Fire, which clocks in around 30 revised editions since the first publication in 1982.
His former home at 56 Hope Rd in Kingston, Jamaica is now a Marley museum and that country's most popular tourist site.
bobmarley.com offers his life story and related Rastafarian and Jamaican information alongside merchandise such as clothes, hats, books, posters, Bob mousepads and watches, videos ...
And today Marley is merchandising as much as music in most parts of the planet.
Rita Marley has launched the Marley luggage collection (nylon bags which can accommodate more than 45kg of stress according to Vic Vanjari of Moonglow Trading Ltd) and in Bali in the reggae shop you can buy his likeness slapped onto any red, green and gold product right alongside a marijuana leaf.
From the T-shirt shops of Los Angeles and the Gold Coast to Ghana and Japan, licensing of Marley's likeness is big business. And this month a Marley Tribute to Freedom theme park opened at Florida's Universal Studios.
In this part of the world we don't need such shrines. We don't mourn his death but celebrate his life, music and message of dignity, tolerance and racial unity.
It's a message worth remembering as we think about the meaning of Waitangi Day and the coincidence of it being Bob Marley's birthday.
What: The 5th Annual One Love Unity Celebration
Where: Powerstation
When: Saturday February 6
Pictured: Bob Marley
By Graham Reid
Summertime a few years ago and I am walking in the Blue Mountains west of Sydney. Around the corner come two Maori guys who greet me with eyebrow flashes and a hefty, "Kia ora."
We run down a quick exchange: "Do you live here?" "Nah, just over for a
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