Marley

As this Easter weekend winds down, I had to squeeze in a post about a great documentary I saw over the weekend about Bob Marley called, fittingly enough, Marley. I had seen a small part of the documentary about a week or so ago on cable, but I came in halfway through it and wanted to see the whole thing so I watched it on Netflix. (Thank God for Netflix streaming!) I really didn't know anything about Bob Marley other than that he was a reggae singer who was a Rastafarian. The documentary was fascinating because I learned a lot about Marley, his life, Rastafarianism, and Jamaica. I highly recommend it for those interested in Marley or just for those who want to watch an interesting documentary. Marley was such a great spokesman for Jamaica and its people and he never shied away from the problems and conflicts in his home country. Even after he was shot during an assassination attempt, he still got on stage and sang about the need for Jamaicans to unify. I was surprised to learn that he died from cancer at age 36 and that he'd fathered eleven children with seven different women. (Whoa!)

I've complained frequently about the sad state of movies out these days, but my criticism doesn't extend to the great documentaries being put out these days. The Marley documentary along with the Nina Simone and Amy Winehouse docs have been really great.