“It started from watching my father. That’s why my rhythm guitar emulates his. Because his rhythm guitar was wicked”: Ziggy Marley on what he learned from his dad, why the guitar can be a weapon, and how music can still change the world

Ziggy Marley wears a Jamaican tracksuit and plays his Fender Stratocaster.

For all his globe-shaking musical legacy, socio-political ripples, and afterlife as a dorm-room poster, when Bob Marley passed in May 1981 – aged just 36 – there was a maddening sense of a mission not yet accomplished.

Four decades later, one suspects Marley would be fiercely proud of how his eldest son, Ziggy, ran with the baton. Not quite a teenager when the Jamaican superstar left him fatherless, the 57-year-old has since built on that hallowed family name with his Grammy-winning catalog, and done immeasurable good with his U.R.G.E. charitable foundation.