More to Rita than the Marley legacy

Rita Marley, like her late husband, the legendary icon Robert Nesta Marley, has given her life to reggae music.

She has also given much of her wealth to the poor through numerous foundations as well as from her own pocket.

Credited with keeping The Gong’s legacy alive through the activations of the Bob Marley Estate and the forging of a formidable empire with numerous offshoot companies, it is easy to tie Rita’s legacy to the reggae legend’s and not be able to tell them apart.

But they are separate legacies and Rita is a legend in her own right.

Rita began her singing career as a member of a group known as The Soulettes, this coming after she had won ‘Lanamans Children’s Hour’ on her own and earned a reputation as a good vocalist.

The Soulettes were doomed to failure on account of a chance meeting with Bob, even before he became the icon we remember today.

That meeting led to the formation of the I-Threes with Marcia Griffiths and Judy Mowatt joining Rita to sing back-up vocals for Bob Marley and the Wailers.

But Rita also produced some marvellous numbers as a solo act, her four albums, ‘Who Feels It Knows It’, ‘Harambe’, ‘Spectacle for Tribuffalos’, and ‘We Mus Carry On’, earning her much fame the world over.

‘We Must Carry On’, for instance, earned a Grammy nomination in 1991, while 10 years earlier, the single ‘One Draw’ went, to put it in modern-day parlance, viral. To date the single has sold 2 million copies and was the first reggae single to do as well as it did on the Billboard Disco Charts, peaking at 48.

But as a humanitarian, Rita also stands alone, with her African name Afua Adobea (Queen of Development), signalling the way she is seen in places like Ghana and Ethiopia.

In fact, Rita has adopted a number of Ethiopian children over the years she spent looking after the Bob Marley Estate. To date, her children number a dozen and she has more than 60 grandchildren.

So influential has she been that in 2019 she was bestowed with the Order of Jamaica for significant contributions to Reggae Music and impactful humanitarian works through the Rita Marley Foundation. The Order of Jamaica is the country’s third-highest civilian honour.