The Death Poem Of Bob Marley

by John Marcoux

In 1980, when he sensed his life force fading fast, reggae superstar Bob Marley dropped a simple-sounding single titled “Redemption Song.” Then he dropped dead.

You could call that a mic drop. Or as journalists have called it, Marley’s last testament, epitaph, and memorial. Or as end-of-life specialists would call it, Marley’s last words, his dying declaration, and his death meditation. Each of these labels tells a truth. None tell the whole truth. For that, try calling “Redemption Song” a jisei, Japanese for “farewell poem to life,” but mistranslated in the West as “death poem.”

Never heard of death poetry? That’s understandable. The genre’s popularity peaked centuries ago. The authors are obscure—mostly Zen monks, Zen artists, and Zen-trained samurai. And the creative process yields only one-hit wonders. After a death poem springs, the Grim Reaper swings.

If you are skeptical about Bob Marley’s place among these buzzer-beating bards, ask yourself what you would do if you knew that you were about to die. Would you scramble to survive? Confess? Curse? Collapse? Cry? Sure. Would you flabbergast bystanders with a troubadour’s goodbye? Unlikely. It’s tricky enough to sing and strum while staying totally aware; but you’ll need Buddha-like poise to do so knowing these are your last puffs of air.

The timing of “Redemption Song,” by itself, tantalizes the genuine possibility that Marley did, indeed, deliver a Zen farewell. Other evidence corroborating this theory has been hiding in plain sight for nearly fifty years. Why sleuth such proof? Because the clues lead to a state of consciousness so superbright that exposure to it just might ignite your own illumination. Enlightenment can be contagious like that, y’know. 

Begin your detective work at Bob Marley’s end. Witness what his spirit uttered while his body sputtered. Mind the mindful way he chose to fade away.

☠

A no-nonsense oncologist issued the ultimatum: amputate the big toe with the malignant melanoma or die. Bob refused. Consequences ensued. Symptoms mounted.

He successfully concealed his lethargy, headaches, throat pain, and vomiting. But his cold sweats, rattled breath, and weight loss had become apparent. When a group photo of the whole band was published, fans fretted over Marley’s gaunt appearance. Spin doctors from his record label whipped up some plausible deniability with insinuations that the recent world tour had left him “exhausted.”

Amid this health decline, Bob started riffing what he called a “folk song spiritual.” He would sit and daydream with his acoustic guitar, improvising a “lyrical sprickle” here, noodling around with a melodic transition there. No rush. Just spontaneous bubbling. The project remained a secret for many months. He almost debuted it during a live show but decided to wait a little longer.

One day, after Marley had submitted all the songs he believed were needed to complete his next LP, his producer challenged him for something more. Bob returned to the recording booth to cut an unplanned, last-minute number. After trying several versions, he felt something was off. So he told his bandmates to take a break, stepped up to the mic, and played “Redemption Song” by himself as a bare-bones ballad—the same way he’d been steeping it. 

This final take from his final session became the final track on his final album.

☠

Had you called it a “death poem” in his presence, Marley would have confronted you with his screwface. “Death?” he once asked incredulously. “Don’t speak of death.” He insisted that death does not exist, that it was not even in his language. This was not some eccentric celebrity mouthing off inanities, but a man of God voicing articles of faith. 

You see, Marley knew that the concept of an afterlife had been exploited to subjugate his ancestors. Stolen from Africa and brought to the Americas, those slaves were coerced with the Holy Bible into an unholy bargain: toil in chains on Earth now, in exchange for eternal freedom in Heaven later. That’s evil, or what Rastafarians like Bob condemn as “Babylon” and “the bottomless pit.” That’s why Rastas reject any suggestion that a blissful hereafter could compensate for a hellish here-and-now. And that’s why Marley counseled you to abandon all post-mortem ambitions: “If you know what life is worth / you will look for yours on earth.”

He practiced what he preached. While still a struggling artist, Bob declined an invitation to join a concert tour guaranteed to make him rich and famous. Why? Because he refused to share billing with a band named The Grateful Dead. Again, death. “I don’t believe in death, neither in flesh nor in spirit.”

Nope. Bob did not want to hear about any “death poem.” But had you instead called it a “farewell poem to life,” well, then you would have felt the warmth of his full Caribbean smile. Marley loved life. He swore: “The greatest thing is life, mon, life.” And when asked about the purpose of his music, he did not hesitate to answer: “I have a message and I want to get it across. The message is to live!”

☠

And yet, despite his refusal to publicly acknowledge death, abundant evidence indicates that Marley was, in fact, privately meditating upon death while creating “Redemption Song.” Hear his wife recall: “He was already secretly in a lot of pain and dealt with his own mortality, a feature that is clearly apparent in the album, particularly in this song.”

Verify Rita’s eyewitness account. Press up against the music itself. Feel three unique vibrations emanating from Bob’s mortal consciousness, the exclusive jurisdiction of death meditations. 

First, notice how “Redemption Song” is his only single devoid of reggae music, the hypnotic soundscape that defines his catalog. Why, in his final work, did he suddenly ditch his catch-a-fire syncopated complexity for campfire singalong simplicity? Because he is beseeching you to join in: “Won’t you help to sing / these songs of freedom?” Bob was famously self-reliant, but here he is imploring you for assistance with his divine mission. Death meditations had made him aware that he would not be around for much longer to deliver Jah’s message.

Second, observe how “Redemption Song” is his only single paced faster than roots rhythm. Why, in his final work, did he suddenly accelerate from his tried-and-true tempo of a healthy human’s resting heart rate (sixty-two to seventy-seven beats per minute) to that of a healthy human’s galloping heart rate (one hundred sixteen beats per minute)? Because he is spurring you “forward in this generation.” Bob was famously mellow, but here he is elbowing you to double-time it, chop-chop. Death meditations had made him aware that he would not be around for much longer to urge you onward.

Third, witness how “Redemption Song” is his only single to address your apocalyptic anxiety: “Have no fear for atomic energy / ’cause none of them can stop the time.” Why, in his final work, did he suddenly try to soothe your dread of nuclear annihilation with an assurance of eternity? Hear him explain, “Me say ‘have no fear’ because man must have hope.” Bob was famously distrustful, but here he is shining incandescent optimism at your darkest pessimism. Death meditations had made him aware that he would not be around for much longer to light you up.

Oh, Bob Marley was meditating about death, all right. But he was not singing about death. He was singing about hope, progress, and freedom. As he privately prepared to die, he publicly encouraged you to live.

☠

After releasing “Redemption Song,” Marley launched a tour to promote it but soon suffered a massive stroke. X-rays revealed cancer had metastasized from his big toe up through his liver and lungs and bulged into an enormous, inoperable, terminal brain tumor. Baffled by Marley’s ability to function at all, doctors gave him three weeks to live, max.

Hours later, and expecting to expire at any moment, Bob played a final concert. For his last encore, he performed “Redemption Song.” This rendition contained a telling revision. Instead of the original lyric “all I ever have,” he sang “all I ever had.”

He knew he was a goner. In the law, whatever you say while facing imminent and certain death is presumed to be an uncommonly honest “dying declaration.” It’s a modern legal concept rooted in ancient human experience: when you know you’re about to die, you do the opposite of lie. You blurt out Truth.

In 483 BCE, the Buddha knew he was about to die from food poisoning when he declared: “Work out your redemption with care.” Twenty-five hundred years later, Bob Marley knew he was about to die from cancer when he declared: “Emancipate yourself.” The words “redemption” and “emancipation” are synonymous. These doomed dudes blurted out the same Truth.

☠

The Buddha’s final teaching directed his students to look inward for redemption: “Be a light unto yourself; betake yourselves to no external refuge. Hold fast to the Truth. Look not for refuge to anyone besides yourselves.” A venerated Buddhist text elucidates his point: “Those who know by themselves do not look for anything external … There is a knower in your own mind, and it is this that makes you realize the Truth by yourselves.”

Likewise, Bob’s final lyrics directed his audience to look inward for emancipation because “none but ourselves can free our minds.” And he elucidated on this point during a final interview, after a journalist prompted him to “keep talking to the people, they might never hear your voice again.” Marley told the audience to hear themselves instead: “Well, the people have a voice inside of them that talk to them, y’know? That is the voice that these people must listen to, because in everything you’re going to do, there is a wrong way and a right way. And if you listen good, you will know the right way, y’know? Because there’s a voice inside talking to everyone.”

This advice is impeccably Zen. The Buddhist sect of Zen pursues an exclusively internal path. No doctrine. No scriptures. No deference to any external higher power. Just meditation in solitude. That’s what the Buddha prescribed. That’s what Zen Buddhists do. And that’s what Bob Marley did: “I always meditate. Quietness is a strong part of my life.”

Meditation is Zen’s main technique for achieving satori, also known as enlightenment, a firsthand experience of ultimate Truth that your everyday rational intellect cannot attain. To help you shake free from everyday thinking, Zen deploys secondary techniques. Ask a Zen master logical questions; receive replies rife with contradictions, paradoxes, and bizarre conduct. Become distracted during a meditation session; feel your attention return to the present moment when a monk strikes the gong. Behold a Zen artist’s minimalist painting, poem, or garden; fill the empty space with a lightning bolt flash of intuitive insight: “Ah!” Invite Zen monks to keep a vigil by your death bed; hear them announce the moment when your ego dies before your body dies—when “ignorance vanishes like frost in the sun” and Truth glows like a full moon rising.

Notice the harmony between Zen enlightenment attained at the edge of death and legal declarations made at the edge of death. Buddhists say you are seeing the Truth; judges see you as saying the Truth. Either way, Bob Marley and the Buddha concluded their lives seeing and saying the same Truth. They both urged you to free you from you. 

☠

After Marley barely eked “Redemption Song” into existence, it barely reached your ears. The tour to promote it was cut short by his stroke. The consequent lack of radio airplay smothered it in the crib. After failing to chart, it laid in cold storage for several years. When compiling Marley’s posthumous anthology, producers took a stab at it before setting it on the chopping block out of concern that its folkie sound might choke out an otherwise radio-friendly playlist. When making the final cut, they decided to bury “Redemption Song” in the middle of side two of Legend, which would go on to become one of the world’s best-selling, most-bootlegged albums ever. 

Pause to reflect on this odyssey of close calls. Bob’s final work was almost not composed, almost not finished, almost not recorded, almost not performed live, almost not broadcast, and almost not included among his collected works. Nonetheless, it achieved global market penetration to die for. Disregard the music industry’s conventional success metrics such as Billboard charts, iTunes sales, YouTube plays, and Spotify streams. A half-century after its creation, “Redemption Song” rings familiar across the planet, from inner city cafés to the indigenous villages where Marley is now known more as a “redeemer” than as a musician.

That feat feels even more impressive when you consider how the song’s title, music, and lyrics defy music industry norms. If you survey consumers about the word “redemption,” expect to hear about the five- and ten-cent bounties stamped onto recyclable aluminum cans. If you record yourself playing acoustic guitar like Marley, prepare to be told that it sounds like a rough demo. And if you search his lyrics for an easy-to-grasp pop narrative accessible to the peoples of the world, find instead shapeshifting obscurities from a stoned sage vibing yonder time and space.

So what is the secret to its improbable success? Why did producers include this commercial flop on Legend, an album conceived solely to maximize commercial airplay? Why have journalists been reaching for the marble to glorify it as one of The Greatest Songs of All Time? And how in the hell has it been heard by so many humans? Expect no easy answers. For if it is, indeed, a death poem, then it is Zen and, thus, inscrutable to everyday logic.

Try another way. Imagine that Marley embedded into “Redemption Song” a homing beacon that emits a mystical signal. While tracking this signal back to its source, you reach the outer limit of what you can ever know or sense about the universe. Squint into the beyond as far as you might, you simply cannot identify this signal. That’s okay. Sometimes consciousness vibrates at a frequency so rarely encountered that this rich language is still too poor to name it.

So stop trying to name it. Just experience it firsthand.

☠

Prepare to travel back in time to witness a live performance of “Redemption Song.” 

With your next inhale, expand your lungs like hot air balloons and float up through sunset-painted clouds. When you exhale, glide down into your seat inside a sold-out Madison Square Garden. It is now September 20, 1980. You’ve arrived at the end of Bob Marley’s penultimate concert. The stage is empty. The lights are dim. The audience buzzes with anticipation for an encore.

Shush. Here he comes, returning to the stage. Notice his simple cotton t-shirt, broken-in denim, battered acoustic guitar. Bling-free Bob.

He stands still at the mic. Some fans mistake this for calculated stagecraft. You know better. Because you are visiting from the future, you know that tomorrow morning he is going to jog through Central Park and collapse from that devastating stroke. Tonight, he is all but depleted. He needs this stillness. He needs these moments to replenish enough life force to start one more number.

Marley picks the opening notes. The nursery rhyme melody stirs the whole crowd (as one journalist in attendance will later write) to “a mighty exhalation, as if Bob was breathing new life into them.” Here he is inspiring at the same time he is expiring—the same way all death poets do.

Marley shifts from plucking spare notes to strumming basic chords. He sings and plays with natural simplicity. His delivery feels direct and spontaneous. His lyrics are compact, uncomplicated statements about people, places, and things that feel concrete and real. He expresses a simple look, a simple sound, a simple feel—the same way all death poets do.

Listen more closely now, as if through a stethoscope, and detect those simplicities shatter into complexities.

Notice it in Bob’s tone: this five-foot seven-inch skinny musician swells into a Biblical paragon “made strong by the hand of the Almighty.” The flex of divine power from such a diminutive figure confronts you with a jarring contradiction—the same way a Zen master would confront you with a contradiction to clobber your rational mind.

Notice it also in Bob’s question: “How long shall they kill our prophets / while we stand aside and look?” His inquiry challenges you to see beyond the mirage of everyday logic—the same way a Zen master would challenge you to see beyond a koan: What’s the sound made by one hand clapping?

Notice it also in Bob’s lyrical parade of persons identified only by the ambiguous pronouns “I,” “you,” “it,” “we,” “some,” and “they.” Marley makes them feel familiar without sketching any of their details. He lures your imagination to fill in their undefined faces—the same way a Zen painter brushes a few strokes around empty spaces to conjure vast landscapes from your mind’s eye.

Listen even more closely now. Sense Bob singing something without singing it. He cannot sing it to you. You must experience firsthand what is unsung. Squint into the beyond and visualize his lyrics strewn like stars across the night sky. Stargaze at the lyrics until your mind constellates his tiny points of light into a celestial image—the same way your mind merges the tiny phrases of a Zen haiku into a cosmic insight. Ah!

If you get the feeling that Marley is dreaming a dream from his mind straight into yours, you are not alone. Notice his sound engineers have cranked up the echo effect on his mic, just as they did during the final recording session of his life. That much reverb could toast most vocals, but here it works. Marley sounds as if he is performing at the edge of the bottomless pit, positively vibrating “Redemption Song” into the void, summoning you up out of the darkness like a full moon rising.

☠

When the music stops, feel the applause hit you like a gong. Float back up into the delightful night sky and glide back to where your detective work began, sleuthing the circumstances around Bob Marley’s end.

Is “Redemption Song” a jisei? You have gathered enough evidence to make that case. But all the proofs you would cite are external to your mind. And all the arguments you would offer are logical to your mind. Why measure for Zen with non-Zen metrics?

Try another way. Heed the dying words of Bob Marley and the Buddha. Experience the Truth in your own mind. Cue up “Redemption Song.” Press play. Meditate. 

Only the voice inside of you can tell / if you are witnessing a Zen farewell.

☠