A son of Bob Marley, Rohan Marley, has found his calling as a coffee grower and producer. As the founder and head of Marley Coffee, Rohan has worked for years to make his venture profitable and stable. The company started a few years ago when he bought 52 acres of pristine land in Jamaica for just $200,000.
“I’m a Rasta man, and I can’t have a piece of land that isn’t something I want to eat from,” said Marley in an interview with Co.EXIST . One of Bob Marley’s many children, Rohan left Jamaica at age 12 and has done everything from attending the University of Miami to playing football in Canada.
His connection to Canada recently came in handy. On August 28, the Wall Street Journal reported that Marley has entered into a two-year deal with the Ottawa Sports and Entertainment Group.
Marley Coffee, which made $6 million in 2013, is sustainably grown and ethically farmed. The artisan-roasted gourmet coffee beans are sourced globally from countries such as Ethiopia. But the 52 acres in Marley’s birthplace of Jamaica are also still in cultivation.
Though some of Bob Marley’s children followed in his footsteps and became musicians, Rohan is sticking only to coffee.
The name of the late, great Bob Marley has also been in the news recently for a different, unrelated reason. Last week, it was announced that Center Stage in Baltimore, Maryland, will premiere a musical about the legendary singer’s life.
According to the Baltimore Sun , Marley will be written and directed by Kwame Kwei-Armeh, from the U.K. It will include a score of Bob Marley music and will run in 2015 from May 6 to June 14.
A longtime fan of the reggae musician’s work, 47-year-old Kwei-Armah was asked as far back as 2008 to write a Bob Marley musical by producers in London. Though the project flopped when they couldn’t obtain the rights to Marley’s life story, Kwei-Armah got a second chance last year.
“The producers called me again at the end of last year, and now they had the rights to Bob’s story,” he said. “Again I said, ‘Of course.’ But I said I would not do a musical about Bob’s life story. Instead, I would choose a period in his life, 1975 to 1978, when there was an attempted assassination in Jamaica and he went into a self-imposed exile in London.”
