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REGGAE SINGER -- This is an undated' photo of reggae singer Bob Marley. People will gather to mark the 55th anniversary of his birth in his old neighborhood of Trench Town, Jamaica Saturday. Marley died of cancer in 1981 at the age of 36.

JAMAICANS HOLD MARLEY CONCERT

Associated Press

KINGSTON, Jamaica - In Trech Town, it's as if Bob Marley never died.

Men and women from around the neighborhood still mingle in the "yard" - a park on First Street where the reggae singer began singing with his band, the Wailers.

Today with a resurgence of nostalgia fed by millennial recognition of Marley's work, they are hard at work turning a few dilapidated buildings in one of Kingston's poorest neighborhoods into a museum to mark that would have been the singer's 55th birthday on Sunday.

Reggae musicians plan a free concert to coincide with the anniversary. And the island's two major television stations are airing a musical tribute to Jamaica's most famous musical export-a national hero whose music embodies people's hopes and dreams.
Marley died of cancer in 1981 at the age of 36.
The current round of Marley mania beagan in December when the British Broadcasting Corp. declared Marley's song "One Love" the anthem of the century and Time magazine named 1977's "Exodus" the album of the century.

"Every song is a classic, from the messages of love to the anthems of revolution," Time wrote of "Exodus." "But more than that, the album is a political and cultural nonis, drawing inspiration from the Third World and then giving voice to it the world over."

"Marley has always been popular here, but that made people proud," said Kevin Chang O'Brien, author of "Reggae Routes," a history of Jamaican music. "Jamaica's a small country.... When the rest of the world, countries we tend to look up 'to like America and Britain, certainly it, we can let our feelings loose."

Radio Jamaica disc jockey Richard Burgess said the surge in Marley nostalgia also is fed by growing despair over crime and economic woes in the Caribbean nation.

"He spoke to a lot of the suffering that many people are now dealing' with and they' find strength in his music," Burgess said. "Much of his music was the cry of the oppressed, the poor but there were also bright songs, messages of hope and redemption that people fmd solace in."

In "the yard," tree trunks are painted the black, yellow, red and green of Marley's Rastafari faith-the homegrown religion that reveres Ethiopia's deceased Emperor Haile Selassie as a god and considers black people living outside Mrica as captives in a foreign land. Though the museum here won't be completed for some time, the community plans to officially open it next Sunday.

Marley retained strong link to Trench Town even after becoming wealthy and internationally famous. Trench Town resident Joel Brown recalled how Marley would buy food for the people of the neighborhood.

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