Welcome to the Tweet Trends podcast. Hey, Evette, what's trending today? Hey, I'm Evette, hey girl. And you are tuned in to Tweet Trends.
It's the quickest way to find out what's trending today. Welcome back to Tweet Trends, friends. Yes, I am back. I'm here.
I'm still not at 100%. And the whole voice thing is still coming back. But I could not leave you without a word today, because it'd just be really rude if I just didn't even show up and you're expecting you to come and talk to you about something. So today, I don't normally do this.
But today, we are celebrating the birthday of the infamous Bob Marley yesterday. It's his birthday. And that's what we're talking about. So let's get started.
When I dove a little bit deeper to look into information about Bob Marley and all the things that go into who he was as a musician, as a person, I started off with this one little blurb about him. It was two sentences long. And from those two sentences, I fell down a rabbit hole. It was absolutely amazing.
And it happens online where you go one place, you see something, you click on something, and it takes you to 20 different locations. But the same thing happened to me looking up the information about Bob Marley. But it was eye-opening. It was amazing.
And it's just kind of like, there's so much information out there, guys. Go out there and check it out. Like, not just about Bob Marley, about anything. But let me go back to these two sentences.
So when the two sentences, the first part was talking about his music and saying that it evolved from scah to reggae to rocksteady and eventually into a blend of all of those genres. And that blew me away because I'd heard of scah before. But I think my mind, when I think scah, I think scah punk and scah punk is like, OMG, are you saying that Bob Marley was that kind of singer? So I went and I looked it up.
And I'm going to give you the link so you can hear it too. And found this album, Bob Marley and the Whalers, the album title is Destiny, Rare, Sky Side from Studio One. And it's from 63 to 66, 1963 to 1966. Somewhere around there.
And listening to this, I'm like, OK, OK. So it didn't quite sit, yell or scream reggae. But it was like light subtleness of it. Like, OK, I can see how reggae came out of this.
Yeah, yeah, let's keep that moving. And so from there, I'm like, well, I mentioned rocksteady too. Well, then I went and found a rocksteady group. And it was talking about a documentary and everything that's telling the story of the rocksteady era.
But listening to that is kind of like, it was a little bit more of what I viewed reggae to be like, oh, OK, all right, I hear you. So then, and of course, I already knew what reggae was. But it was really interesting because looking into the information about Sky, I ran across a site that was talking about the Top 10 Sky bands. And some of those bands were Sky Punk and other versions of Sky.
But every now and then in a song, like, they would play, I'd be like, oh, I can hear it. I hear it. The type of Bob Marley's Sky in these songs. And it was amazing, amazing.
So I'm going to link that as well so that you can check that out, too, because I'm telling you, this was an awesome little ride I went and trying to figure out about what I could talk about for Bob Marley's birthday. So going back to that little blur about what I was talking about, the second part of that first sentence, there was a word in there that kind of made me feel some type of way. And I'm going to go ahead and be completely transparent with you. The word was wild.
So I talked about the blending of those three types of music styles that gave us what Bob Marley presented to us, that we felt was awesome. And then it said, along with his wild dreadlocks, the word wild, kind of made me sit back. I was a little astonished that they used that word. But astonished that's an inside joke with our family.
But anyway, so the fact that they called it wild, I always feel like, as an African-American, that words like that used to describe our hair, it's never really much of a compliment. It's usually a way to put you down, like, let me find a way to put you in your place, which is nappy head, which is a peasy head, you know, that kind of thing. And it's like, so for them to write in here his wild dreadlocks, it took me back to the first time I mentioned dreadlocks to someone. It was a friend of my cousin, and her name is Nina.
And she had the most beautiful locks that somebody took their time and made sure that every single one of them was the perfect size. They were uniform. She would braid them together and then loosen it out. And they would be wavy.
And they were like down to her butt. They were gorgeous. And I walked up to where I was like, oh my gosh, your dreadlocks are so beautiful. And she gave me this stink look and was like, what's dreadful about them?
And I'm like, excuse me? I just like, you call them dreadlocks. They're just locks. I'm like, oh, well then.
And did a little backpedal step out of that one. And kept it moving. But so it took me to a place where I needed to do some research. And I had no idea that the whole process, mindset of the locks, rostafarians, I did not know that there was an emperor in Ethiopia, named Ross Tafari.
It was like, oh my gosh. And the guerrilla warriors, when he was exiled, the guerrilla warriors swore not to cut their hair until he was reinstated as the emperor of Ethiopia. And when you don't do anything with your hair, it gets netted. And it will lock up.
There you go with the locks. And the whole idea of the rostas, those people that were holding out for Ross Tafari, they became a threat to Christianity and all the other things that were going on in that time period. And it was just like, so mind-boggling, it was like, oh my goodness. And because of the fact that these rostas smoked ganja, now that was a part of their whole process too.
They felt that it brought enlightenment to them. It helped them to think and be in a clearer state of well-being. And for some people, I think that's why they do it now. But their dreadlocks were thought to be disgusting, hence the dread part.
People dreaded that look. Having said all of that, I understood why Nina took offense to the fact that I referred to her hair as dreadlocks, because I didn't know the history behind it. And although by that point in time, it had already been brought into mainstream culture. And just about anybody, red, yellow, black, white, purple, everybody that wanted dreadlocks had them.
So to me, the fact that that's what they called them, then that's what it was. But I'm more careful now that when I refer to people's hair, I'll call it locks. And if they choose to refer to them as dreadlocks, then that's on them. But I learned my lesson.
So if we're going to have a party and celebrate, you can't forget the fam. So I decided I'd look up some information about Bob Marley's family. Now I knew he had a couple of kids. I had no idea that there were 11 children that are acknowledged that they say are for sure his children.
And of those 11, two of them are actually not his biological children. They are the children of his wife that he just kind of brought into the fold. So let me run down the list of these 11 children. The first one is Sharon.
She's actually Rita's daughter, who was his wife, a daughter she had from a previous marriage. Now Sharon was a part of the Melody Maker. However, she stepped away from that and decided to be more of a community organizer and activist. And she's also the curator of the Bob Marley Museum in Kingston, Jamaica.
Next came Sedela, I think that's how you pronounce her name. She's named after Bob Marley's mother. And she was also a part of the Melody Makers. And when she stepped away from that, she went into the fashion industry and actually designed the uniforms for the 2012 Jamaican Olympic team and has also designed for Puma and a couple of other big name stylists.
Then next comes David, that we all know as Ziggy. And he's a Grammy award-winning musician. And let me tell you, nobody probably, I'm probably like the only person that feels this way, but he did the theme song for the cartoon author that comes on PBS. I love that song, it gives me life.
Just two days ago, I was jamming to it. We were flipping through stations, it was coming on, and my daughter was like, oh, but I don't wanna watch that right now. And I'm like, no boo, we got to listen to the song because this song right here, this is my jam, okay? So, I just had to put that in there.
Love, love, love the theme song for author. Anyway, next up is Stephen. He's also a Grammy award-winning musician. There's Robert, now he has chosen to kind of live a private life.
He's not in the spotlight, so there's not a whole lot of information about him. Then there is the father of five of Lauren, Lauren, Lauren Hills, children, that's Rome. And he is also a musician, how crazy is this? Then there's Karen, she's another one who is like, decided to live her life out of the spotlight, so there's not a lot of information on her.
Then there's Stephanie. She is another one of the daughters from his wife, so she's not a biological child. However, she was more on the business side of the music, and she's actually the director at the Marley Resort and Spa, I had no idea they had a luxury vacation resort. Next, there's Julian.
He is a Grammy award-nominated musician. There's Kaimani. He is also a musician, most popular for Rege and Dance Hall, and then also a film actor who starred in the Jamaican film One Love and Shada. He's worked with rap musicians, such as Shaggy and Young Buck, among others.
And last but not least, there is Damien, also known as Junior Gong. And can you guess what he does? He's a musician. Yep, so to me, I'm kind of looking at this, like it must be something in the DNA, all of the kids who we know something about did something in the music industry.
The majority of them are actually musicians. You've got one that's like, okay, so I'm not, I don't sing, I don't play an instrument, but I'll get the finances and business side going, you know, I think that's so freaking awesome. Especially considering that it's not like they were all born of the same parents. Some of them have different mothers, and yet they still got that talent from their father.
Amazing. Well, all right, that's today's episode of Tweetrends. Do me a favor and head on over to Twitter and follow me at Hei YeeVet. That's at H-E-E-E-T-E, or just look for the hashtag tweet trends.
And as you celebrate Bob Marley's birthday today, just go somewhere and chill out, kick your feet up, and listen to a little Bob Marley. And hey, definitely go back to his ska days and his rock steady time period, and listen to it all, see how it all kind of goes and flows together. It's really, really an awesome history. And there's another part that I didn't even get to mention was it was dealing with music history, which is why I kind of did not go there.
But the whole deal with ska and how it eventually got appropriated to by the Nazis, I said, too. It got appropriated by the Nazis. And it's amazing. All of this came from me wanting to know more about Bob Marley because I was very young when he passed and mind blown.
OK, so anyway, enjoy your Bob Marley day, enjoy the music, look on Twitter for the links to the different places I was talking about earlier, have a great weekend, and I'll see you back here on Tuesday.