dancingbear --
I will write this answer in "bullet form" to save time:
1. Marley was born in 1945 in Nine Miles, St. Ann's,Jamaica:
"Robert Nesta Marley is born at Nine Miles, St. Ann's, Jamaica. Son of
Norval Sinclair Marley, a fifty-something Liverpool-born captain in
the British Army, and the teenage Cedalla Booker. This birthdate is
believed to be the correct although no birth certificate has ever been
found."
Third Field: Bob Marley: Timeline
http://www.thirdfield.com/new/timeline.html
2. Marley's only formal education was at the Stephney All-Age School in Nine Miles.
"The humble clusters of tin-roofed houses that flank a narrow road
traversing the verdant hills testify to the relative prosperity that
Marley's memory bequeaths to the place of his birth. Guesthouses for
overnight visitors, eateries peddling vegetarian patties by the
roadside, the Stephney All-Age School that Marley attended as a boy
all benefit from the brisk traffic."
LA Times: Jamaicans Get Together, Don't Feel All Right About Bob Marley
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-marley6feb06,1,4891437.story?coll=la-headlines-world&ctrack=1&cset=true
2. He ended his formal education at age 14 and apprenticed with a welder:
"At 14 it was time for Bob to leave school and his mother wanted him
apprenticed to a welder, but Bob knew that this was not the way he
wanted to go. Bob did serve his apprenticeship as a welder but it
wasn't without incident."
Spider's Bob Marley and the Wailers Website
http://freespace.virgin.net/ziggy.marley/bobs_life.html
I recommend the above site to you for a very brief description of
Marley's childhood, including his exposure to witchcraft.
3. When his father left the family, he moved to Kingston with his
mother and become a student and protege of musician and Rastafarian
Joe Higgs:
"Bob and his mother soon moved to the city of Kingston, and there is where he
became best friends with a kid named Bunny. Together they attended
Joe Higgs's music school. . . ."
Marshall University Web Pages: Bob Marley
http://webpages.marshall.edu/~lee18/Marley.html
Joe Higgs had a profound influence on Marley's musical and Rastafarian education:
"Joe Higgs took particular care to play the part of both musical and
moral tutor to those youth in the area with the ears to hear."
Bobmarley.com: Joe Higgs
http://www.bobmarley.com/life/musicalinfluences/joehiggs/
Clearly the most important and intense part of Marley's "education"
was in Kingston and involved immersion in Rastafarianism and music.
Here is a link to a very interesting site, along with representative
quotes, that pulls together the influences on Marley that really
constituted the core of his "education":
"Trench Town, immortalized in the Marley songs "Trench Town Rock," and
"No Woman No Cry," was young Bob's first home in Kingston. In 1950,
his absent father, citing education as the goal, summoned the young
boy to the city to live with relatives. Bob was mostly abandoned by
his father and clan, and, after a year of fending for himself,
returned to his mother, Cedella, in the small village of Nine Miles."
"After schooling and a host of dead-end jobs-including one as a
welder, where his eye was injured by a way ward shank of metal-Bob and
Bunny tapped into the sounds of Trench Town. They formed the first of
a series of groups, eventually meeting up with Peter (Mcln) Tosh, the
legendary singer and producer, and Rastaman Joe Higgs."
Jamaica Netlink: Bob Marley
http://www.jamaicanetlink.com/content/DUPortal30/home/detail.asp?iData=59&iCat=283&iChannel=2&nChannel=Articles
In sum, Marley's education consisted of ordinary schooling until the
age of 14 and then an intense introduction to music, Rastafarianism
(with its political and cultural components) in Kingston under the
tutelage of Joe Higgs and the influence of his friends and musical
colleagues.
Search Strategy:
I used many Google searches in an effort (successful, I think) to
quickly winnow out the elements of Bob Marley's legendary history that
most directly relate to his formal and informal education. Here are
just a few representative examples of those searches:
"bob marley" school
://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&rls=GGLD,GGLD:2004-01,GGLD:en&q=%22bob+marley%22+school
"bob marley" learned OR "was taught"
://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&rls=GGLD,GGLD:2004-01,GGLD:en&q=+%22bob+marley%22+learned+OR+%22was+taught%22
"bob marley" rastafarianism
://www.google.com/search?num=100&hl=en&c2coff=1&rls=GGLD,GGLD:2004-01,GGLD:en&q=%22bob+marley%22+rastafarianism&spell=1
Given the short time available to pull this basic information
together, I am confident that this is what you are looking for. If
anything is unclear or incomplete, please ask for clarification before
rating the answer.
markj-ga |
