Heart of the Marleys

Heart of the Marleys BY MICHAEL MCKNIGHT

Despite erratic play from a rotation of young quarterbacks, Tulane played in a bowl game for the first time in 11 years, thanks to a defense led by a diminutive true freshman linebacker whose only other scholarship offer came from Duquesne, an FCS program. Years before he met Nico, Johnson would yelp a famous Marley lyric -- Don’t let them fool ya! -- at Hurricanes and Saints practices, a reminder of the importance of film study. And now the grandson of that singer logs countless hours in his film room, where Nico is often joined by a defensive end from Akure, -Nigeria. “Bob Marley’s music is very important throughout Africa,” Ade Aruna says. “My dad played it for us every night. He would play it again in the morning. . . . It would make us feel better.” There have been shelves of books and stacks of films about Marley, but few of them describe him as efficiently as this 20-year-old African does: “He was an activist for oppressed people but also an artist who portrayed the world for what it is. And what it can be.” Nico heard all the stories and all the songs when he was younger, but what fueled his own success story, he says, “came from inside; it’s something I can’t even put into words, because it’s all I know. How do you describe the deepest part of yourself?” When Tulane students find out about the classmate whose granddad’s voice has rung out in college dorm rooms for the last 40 years, Nico sometimes deadpans, “Nah, you got the wrong guy.” Aruna laughs and says, “It works.” Being a Marley can be exhausting. The recurring need to create space for oneself is another family trait. It’s why some of Rohan’s smiles are forced as he crisscrosses the globe shaking hands and closing coffee distribution deals. It’s why he cut his waist-length dreadlocks a year ago. “I began to feel a bit like a mascot in some of these meetings, yuh know.” There is still a concrete soccer field at his father’s old house in -Kingston, which is now the Bob Marley Museum. Bob was always good at soccer, even back in Trench Town when the ball was wadded-up cardboard wound tight with tape. As an adult he could knee-juggle for days. He had a deceptive crossover step and surprising acceleration, and he could rocket shots with either foot. He tore the nail off the big toe on his right foot while playing in Paris in 1977, an injury that first revealed the melanoma that would take his life four years later, the week before Rohan turned nine. The pitch is smaller than it was in the 1970s, and it’s been moved to the back of the house, to a shaded oasis where only family, friends and the ever-present Rasta brethren are granted entry. This is where Rohan is found dribbling alone one morning, on nubby asphalt cracked by thick subterranean tree roots. He is talking about his high school sweetheart, Khawly, and their son who was born four days after his last game as a Hurricane, a loss to top-ranked Nebraska in the ’95 Orange Bowl. “I didn’t know how to be a father,” he says with a relaxed smile, as if he’s relieved to confess this vulnerability out loud. “She raised him. This story is about her too. Any compliments Nico might get, she deserves most of the praise.” Nico’s dark skin comes from his mother. So do his manners, his humility. “I dinna have that when I was his age,” Rohan admits. He talks about his own boyhood in a rough part of Kingston called Spanish Town -- where he got into rock fights and sometimes scrounged for empty bottles so he could buy lunch -- until his sons arrive with their friends. And now a different kind of football is being tossed around. Rohan’s 17-year-old son Zion (khaki skin, one-inch Afro) looks like the teenage Bob pictured on his first crackly records. Twelve-year-old Joshua is a wiry lefthanded quarterback with the distinctive, wide-set eyes of his mom, Hill. Laughing Rasta elders, their gray ropes of hair dangling behind them, try their hand at throwing the football, its seams wobbling. www.ganolifevo.com/ganoforlifeusa