I was reminded this week that the connection to your parents’ place of birth can still take a hold of you so strongly, even when you worry that the thread connecting you has become frayed in some way. That reminder came in the form of one of the most iconic and influential Jamaicans of all time: Bob Marley.
I’ve grown up in a house where his records were played frequently; where his music and life were debated widely. I’ve had the opportunity to walk through his home in Jamaica, which is now a museum. Yet I think I’d underestimated the pride, as the child of Jamaican-born immigrants, that I have in a man who died a year after I was born. Bob Marley is still an omnipresent figure in so many of our lives.
If you have no connection to anywhere else in the world, it may seem inconceivable that your emotions can be triggered by a place where you’ve never lived, but whose culture has always been a part of your life. But it’s true for so many children of immigrants in the UK.
Even the most outwardly sensible people can struggle to get their heads around it. Not so long ago, an acquaintance accused me of being offensive to “real” immigrants during a conversation about the connection I feel to the country of my parents’ birth. He was flabbergasted that Jamaica still mattered in my life. For him, it was absurd that Britain didn’t fill the whole of me.
His view, which arguably had undertones of white supremacy behind it, was clearly nonsense. But it was really quite hurtful and it stuck with me. I was reminded of that conversation as the opening scene began in Bob Marley: One Love, a biopic out later this month but which I saw at a preview showing. Itcharts the creation of what has been called the 20th century’s most important album: Exodus.
I already knew that the film-makers had chosen to keep the patois language of the island undiluted – neither Americanised or Anglicised – and that they made the decision to refrain from using subtitles. But to witness such care and attention to detail afforded in a big-budget film about Bob, whose impact reverberated around the world, took my breath away. It hit my heart, hard. It told the story of Jamaica, through the prism of Jamaicans, for Jamaicans. Not to appease foreign audiences.
It was a timely reminder that although I wasn’t born in Jamaica, I was wholeheartedly raised in its culture, created with its blood and that it is a part of my every being. Whether or not that aforementioned acquaintance agrees with me, I will always be inextricably connected to that little island.
And so, as I watched Bob and Rita Marley’s story unfold on screen, I couldn’t have been a prouder Jamaican. What they achieved against all the odds at that time was, and still is, quite something. The legacy that his family have fought to hold on to so tightly is a sight to behold, too.
The dichotomy in the film between the beauty of the Jamaican landscape and Bob’s voice, and the violence and power struggles on the island’s streets, was striking. It was a reminder that those Jamaicans who managed to succeed did so with a heavy weight stacked on their shoulders: the footprints of colonialism, the environment, violence and the poverty in which they were growing up in.
But they also showed the beauty and pure joy of that music that is still impactful more than 40 years later.
My aunt and I left the cinema with the lyrics to Exodus still ringing in our ears and with our enduring pride in a country that is tiny by comparison with others, but whose huge impact is undeniable. Why on earth would someone disconnect themselves from that pride?
This morning, my daughter Florence and I were dancing away to “So Much Things to Say” as we got ready for nursery, and I’m writing this with “Turn Your Lights Down Low” blasting out of my laptop. Right now I’m also (metaphorically) making rude hand gestures towards anyone who says my pride is misplaced.
Charlene White is a presenter for ‘ITV News’ and ‘Loose Women’
My pride in my Jamaican culture was questioned because I wasn't raised there
20
0
03.02.2024
I was reminded this week that the connection to your parents’ place of birth can still take a hold of you so strongly, even when you worry that the thread connecting you has become frayed in some way. That reminder came in the form of one of the most iconic and influential Jamaicans of all time: Bob Marley.
I’ve grown up in a house where his records were played frequently; where his music and life were debated widely. I’ve had the opportunity to walk through his home in Jamaica, which is now a museum. Yet I think I’d underestimated the pride, as the child of Jamaican-born immigrants, that I have in a man who died a year after I was born. Bob Marley is still an omnipresent figure in so many of our lives.
If you have no connection to anywhere else in the world, it may seem inconceivable that your emotions can be triggered by a place where you’ve never lived, but whose culture has always been a part of your life. But it’s true for so many children of immigrants in the........
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