Earl Chinna Smith and his Nyabinghi Orchestra playing to the sunrise for Bob Marley

On Feb 6, 2018, the 73rd Anniversary of Bob Marley’s birth, Davin Michael Stedman traveled to Nine Mile, birthplace of Bob Marley and witnessed this sacred commemoration at sunrise. As the singing goes on the light grows stronger. You have never heard, nor will you ever hear, a version of “I’ll Fly Away,“ sung with more hope or more sadness. Of this video, Stedman says,: “This video is Earl Chinna Smith and his Nyabinghi Orchestra playing to the sunrise for their dear friend Bob Marley at his birthplace in a remote Jamaican village called Nine Mile. It’s surreal that I am friends with these folks. Mr. Oliver Simms channels the ancestors in a dance that defies explanation. The people of Jamaica are separated from Africa by hundreds of years. But on this Island crucible, that is at once paradise and a prison, it’s moments like these that you realize the days of the Atlantic Slave Trade is still in the long form song of History, less than a beat away.“