Directed by Reinaldo Marcus Green, who memorably directed Will Smith to a Best Actor win for 2021’s King Richard, the film stars Kingsley Ben-Adir as Marley and Lashana Lynch as his wife Rita. It will focus on Marley overcoming the struggles of his early upbringing in Jamaica, ultimately achieving a music career that inspired people across the globe.

Although Marley has been gone for 43 years, that kind of inspiration and influence is still permeating today – and we don’t just mean through the musical output of the many family members and descendants following his creative path. His messages still ring true in today’s political climate, and as reggae reaches more and more ears with global music’s continued boom, it’s nearly impossible to mention the genre without Marley’s name following close behind. 

Kinglsey Ben-Adir as “Bob Marley” in Bob Marley: One Love from Paramount Pictures.

When it comes to the reasons why people might be interested in a Marley biopic in 2024, however, who better to ask than some local reggae stars? Drummer Oz Saunds and guitarist Jay NuFunk have been covering Marley songs and putting on tribute shows in Toronto for over a decade, joining the band Reggaddiction together in 2019, while Lazo, originally from Dominica, is recognized as one of North America’s finest Marley tribute acts and formerly toured with his timeless backing band, The Wailers. All three spoke to RANGE about Marley’s legacy and what he means to them. 

“I grew up in a Jamaican household, and Bob Marley’s Legend album would get played every Sunday at dinner,” Saunds says. “There was a picture of the Pope above my fireplace when I was growing up, and right next to the Pope there was a picture of Bob Marley.” NuFunk, on the other hand, was more attracted to Marley’s status as an icon of counterculture, consuming his work alongside Grateful Dead and Jack Kerouac as a youth. Proving Marley’s power in a variety of areas, Lazo speaks on yet another different sentiment: “The lyrics were expressing sentiments very close to my heart, like equal rights and justice for all, freedom from physical and mental oppression, and Pan-Africanism,” he adds of his first reactions to Marley’s music.

Reggadiction is a 10-piece reggae band that fuses the spirit of Jamaica with Canadian sensibilities.

When it comes to the state of the kinds of reggae music that typically get platformed today, Lazo was quick to note the steady shift in the messaging from when Marley was around – stating that instead of staying true to the reggae movement’s original goal to fight against injustice, the focus has shifted to “money, fun and party.” Saunds and NuFunk also speak to the generational divide, but their thoughts on it are a little more technical.

“His albums are recorded in an insanely layered way, the music is timeless in the way that it’s recorded – it stands up to anything that comes out today,” NuFunk says. “The songwriting is impeccable, there are no chord sequences that are pedestrian, nothing is a throwaway line – every lyric matters.” 

“The 70s were a totally different time,” Saunds adds. “As a musician, you had to be in that recording studio for hours on end to get it right. Because when you’re recording the tape, you’re pressing ‘record’ once, and what you get is what you get. We live in a time now where we can manufacture things, you can make mistakes here and there, you can overdub it. Also, the problems [Marley sings about] still exist, and they still need addressing. If you listen to his words of wisdom, sometimes you can hear a path forward through Bob. And I feel like that’s why his music is still so great today.”

Whether it was his more political output or the love songs that have lasted through the generations, everyone has a different answer when asked about why their personal favourite Marley songs have remained so compelling to them over the years – and as performing musicians, sometimes the answer reflects those comments on the technical intricacies of his music.