Grand Daughter Of Bob Marley Start A Rasta Quest

Details: Published on Monday, 24 October 2011 21:31; Hits: 1489

Donisha Prendergast comes from a showbiz family - and it's not just any old showbiz family. Her grandfather was the late, great reggae superstar Bob Marley, and she grew up steeped in the rich musical legacy of Jamaica's most revered cultural icon.

Her mother, Sharon Marley, toured the world as a member of Ziggy Marley and the Melody Makers, the band fronted by Sharon's brother Ziggy and including their siblings Stephen and Cedella.

So as a kid, Prendergast travelled the world with the Melody Makers and, over breakfast recently at a cafe near her downtown Montreal hotel, she was saying it was a pretty cool way to spend your summer vacations.

"I never went to summer school," said Prendergast. "I went to Japan. Or I went to England on tour. I grew up on tour with my uncles . . . backstage, dancing. If you look back at the old footage of Ziggy Marley and the Melody Makers, you'll see the kids dancing on stage, and I'm one of those kids.

"I grew up in a celebrity family. I've met Michael Jackson. I've met Madonna. I've met these people. I've travelled all over the world. But being human is the most important thing, not being a celebrity. That's the thing about Bob Marley: He never intended to be a celebrity. He was just a man (dealing with) social problems in Jamaica who found a way to sing about it and carried his message around the world."

Marley's message and music are front and centre in the extraordinary documentary RasTa: A Soul's Journey, which had its world premiere in Montreal last Thursday. Toronto director Stuart Samuels follows Prendergast on a quest across the globe as she tries to better understand the roots of Rastafari, the movement that was such an inspiration to Bob Marley.

She meets Rastafarians in Ethiopia, England, Israel, South Africa, Canada and Jamaica, as the film delves into the movement's roots in pre-Second World War Ethiopia, its introduction to Jamaica, and how Marley became its best-known advocate when his Rasta-influenced tunes hit the airwaves in the early 1970s.

The star of the film is Prendergast, and her wide-eyed eagerness to learn about the movement is infectious

"The aim of the film was to put Rasta and reggae and Donisha and Marley together in one film," said Samuels. "As Donisha goes through her search, I'm learning too. What is this? Is it a religion? People don't understand. People are amazed by the information (in the film)."

Music fans have heard Marley singing about Rastafari, about the Rastaman Vibration, but most of us don't know much beyond the lyrics to those old reggae hits by Marley, Toots and the Maytals and Burning Spear. Even Prendergast admits her knowledge was limited before they made the documentary.

"Even as a Rasta woman, I grew up in the Marley family, but it's still a search," said Prendergast. "In the education system, there's nothing about Rasta. When I started to do a little research, I realized I didn't know anything. All I knew about Rasta was the same things that everybody else knows - reggae music, ganja and Ethiopia. I didn't know the trials and tribulations that Rastas went through in the '30s and '40s. As a person, I had to learn more about who I am and who my grandfather was, outside of the music.

Making the movie with a mem-ber of Marley's family helped open a lot of doors for Samuels and was especially important because many in the Rasta community feel they've been burned in the past by the media. Prendergast's exuberant personality didn't hurt, either.

"It wasn't just my name," said Prendergast. "I love people and people have an openness with me."

The film has politicized Prendergast. After spending several years studying in the U.S., she has just moved back to Kingston and wants to do her bit to make living conditions just a bit better for folks in her homeland.

"Justice things, truth-and rights kind of things," said Prendergast. "These are the things that Rastas are supposed to do. We are the rebels, but we are good rebels. Reggae music is rebel music."

SOURCE: VancouverSun