Nadine Sutherland Hails Rita Marley For Being Instrumental In Her Music Career

Reggae/Dancehall songstress Nadine Sutherland has lauded Rita Marley for the role she played in the development of her music career as a young girl, signed to Bob Marley’s Tuff Gong label.

According to Sutherland, the Who Colt The Game singer had taken her under her wing and even ensured that she benefitted from the same voice training as her own children.

“Mrs. Rita Marley was very instrumental to me as a child—instrumental in my career. And she looked out for me so much. I was a country girl in Above Rocks, a town in the parish of Saint Catherine, Jamaica,” she told Stephen Cooper in a recent Reggae Vibes interview.

“The first kind of official voice training that I got like uptown— she was putting Ziggy Marley and the Melody Makers in voice lessons, and she’s like, ‘Nadine, go’.   So that was a whole life-changing event. She never, ever excluded me while I was growing up. And she looked out for me. Because she had young girls, too. So she understood being a mother, and being a young lady in the music industry. So I cannot forget her kindness towards me,” Sutherland added.

The Marley Family celebrated Rita’s 76th birthday last month with a series of events under the theme ‘One Rita: Royal and Rootsy,’ according to the Gleaner.

According to Sutherland, irrespective of what others may say about the Marley matriarch, she had only seen good emanating from her over the decades, thus her decision to pay tribute to her on her new single Queen.

“And you know people have different narratives, but that is what I saw, and I’m very, very thankful.   Rita Marley was always good and kind to me.   And I’ve seen her—you know, a lot of people speak a lot of things, but I’ve seen her be a manager to her children. I’ve seen her—like the first year after Bob transitioned—at the first concert ever at Nine Mile, I sang on it. And it was her trying to keep the legacy of Bob alive,” she said.

“So…I’ve seen her. How other people see her? I can’t really speak on that. And what she has done with her life, what she has done with her children’s life, whatever Mrs. Marley is, she to me deserved to be in that—in me paying homage to her,” she added.

Sutherland was informally ‘signed’ to Tuff Gong after winning a popular singing competition at age 11, but, said that contrary to claims that she was the label’s first artist, she was really not.

“So I really want to clarify that. I’ve seen it a lot, too. I wasn’t even “signed” per se—in terms of a contract with Bob. Secondly, when I went there, Judy Mowatt’s album, Black Woman, was done. There was a whole cadre of artists that Tuff Gong was—I don’t know if they were distributing. There was Israel Vibration, there was Junior Tucker.

Sutherland said that while she has no idea whether she was the first artist Bob Marley personally recorded himself, she knew that he was the first person to have her record a song.

“So I don’t think I was like the first artist that—I don’t know if I was the first artist that Bob Marley recorded… In terms of a Tuff Gong production. I have no idea—I was an eleven-year-old kid.   So I can’t substantiate that part of the history, and say ‘Yes, it was true’.   I was just a child, and everything was happening to me.   So I don’t even know what was happening around me,” she explained.

“I was an eleven-year-old kid. I know my father never mentioned anything being signed. But I know that I did have that recording experience with Bob Marley at Tuff Gong. I do know that my first recording experience, Bob was there. I know that Diane Jobson advocated for me. And everyone knows Diane Jobson was the attorney for Bob Marley at that time,” she explained.