He spoke against racism in his songs, but reggae legend Bob Marley’s angst over his mixed-race background led him to “blacken” his trademark dreadlocks with shoe polish. A new book I&I: The Natural Mystics: Marley, Tosh and Wailer claims that the Jamaican-born icon was insecure over his race and desperately wanted to fit in, reported Guardian online.
In the book, his widow Rita Marley recalls how her husband, born to a white father and a black mother, asked her to “rub shoe polish in his hair to make it more black, make it African.”
The author, Colin Grant, interviewed the his relatives and those close to him for the book, which will be out in January.
Among those featured are Marley’s late mother, Cedella Booker and Chris Blackwell, founder of Island Records, which released most of his music. “When he moved to Trench Town in Kingston aged 13 he was thought of as a white man and would have got a lot of grief for that,” said Grant.