Rita Marley File photos

All over the world, the Marley name and Rita Marley have become synonymous with reggae music, Rastafari and Jamaica. Rita was born Rita Anderson in Cuba, and raised from an early age in Trench Town.

It was in the early '60s that her musical career began as a vocalist with the all-female group, The Soulettes. They had appeared with: the Four Tops, Johnny Nash and numerous other stars.

By the early '70s, Rita and Bob developed the I-Threes, Jamaica's three leading female singers (Rita Marley, Judy Mowatt, Marcia Griffiths), to provide support harmonies for Bob Marley and the Wailers, who had become the first reggae act to gain an international record contract.

Their horizons quickly expanded to the world stage and the songs of love, hope, unity and struggle became the vehicle that transported reggae music, the message of Rastafari, and the culture of the people of Jamaica to the four corners of the Earth.

She was beside Bob three days before the Smile Jamaica Concert in 1976, when they were both wounded in an ambush at the rehearsal studio (56 Hope Road - now the Bob Marley Museum). Bob was shot in the arm and Rita was grazed by a bullet to the head.

On her official website she notes, "Reggae is the heartbeat of a person. It's the people's music. Everywhere you go, you get the same response from both black and white."

Rita Marley has produced three successful solo albums: Who Feels It, Knows It; Harambe and most recently, her 1992 Grammy-nomination album, We Must Carry On. Rita Marley exclaims, "I'm not a star. I'm a mother, a sister and a woman. I think of myself as an example. I was a young girl who grew up in the ghetto. This can show other young people to work hard and, if they achieve success, how to deal with it. The glitter and the glamour can distract you from your roots."

Rita now lives in Ghana and is called Nana Afua Abodea 1, within the Aqwapim region of Ghana.

Rita Marley at the mike and members of the Now Generation Band are pictured in the studio of Federal Recording Co. Ltd., 220 Marcus Garvey Drive, doing a recording.