Professor Carolyn Cooper - Contributed

I've never visited Bob Marley's mausoleum in Nine Miles, St Ann, Jamaica, his place of birth. That's not because I have no sense of occasion, nor reverence for the majesty of origins. I've just never got around to it. One of these days I will, I tell myself. Like many Jamaicans, I do not have the spirit of urgency of the tourist. I know that the beauty spots and the monuments will always be there.

Incidentally, the word 'mausoleum' comes to us from Greek via Latin. The mother of all mausoleums was, in the words of the Oxford English Dictionary, the "magnificent tomb of Mausolus, king of Caria, erected in the middle of the 4th c BC at Halicarnassus by his queen Artemisia."

The name 'Artemisia' has been taken up by botanists and now means a "genus of plants of bitter or aromatic taste". For many Jamaicans, these days, Rita Marley is no longer a queenly Artemisia. Instead, she has left a very bitter taste in the mouth of many cultural nationalists who are outraged at the prospect of Bob Marley's remains being exhumed and deported to Ethiopia.

Emotional terms

Well 'deported' may be a bit too emotional. In Jamaica, we have a problem with deportees. The Right Honourable Marcus Garvey, one of our national heroes, is our most distinguished deportee. Imprisoned in the US on false charges, Marcus Garvey was deported to Jamaica in 1927. We are still trying to clear his name.

By contrast, our common-and-garden deportees are seen as deadly weeds that should not be allowed to take root in Jamaica, their country of often distant birth. They really ought to remain in the US and the UK where many of them developed their criminal skills in the first place.

Marcus Garvey, that grand pan-Africanist, died in Britain in 1940 and was buried there. In 1964, his remains were repatriated in ceremonial splendour as the Jamaican nation reclaimed one of our most distinguished sons of the soil. Like Bob Marley, Marcus Garvey, was born in St Ann, popularly known as the Garden Parish. Unlike Garvey, Marley is not a national hero. Well, not certified by the state.

Systemic oppression

For many Jamaicans at home and across the globe, kaya-smoking, 'Natty Dread' Bob Marley, chanting down the injustices of systemic oppression in the fire-and-brimstone rhetoric of biblically inspired Rastafari revolution, already has the stature of national hero.

Admittedly, it's a rebellious, counter-culture heroism about which 'decent' citizens are conflicted. Aromatic marijuana (kaya, ganja) is a sacrament for Rastafari. But the plant is still criminalised in Jamaica. Possession of even small amounts for personal use is cause for arrest.

Rastafari, a home-grown livity, or way of life, honours His Imperial Majesty, Haile Selassie of Ethiopia, Ras Tafari, whose coronation in 1930 was welcomed as the fulfilment of the biblical prophecy that a king would arise out of Africa. The word Ethiopia (Greek, meaning 'burnt face') once signified all of Africa, not just the modern nation state. At core, Rastafari livity is a radical critique of the racist devaluation of Africa, perpetrated over the last five centuries by the standard-bearers of Euro-American imperialism.

Removing marley's remains

Some cynics suspect that the threat of taking Marley's remains to Ethiopia is a strategic manoeuvre to embarrass the Jamaican Government into declaring the reggae superstar a national hero. Marley has already been awarded the national honour of Order of Merit. In the subversive word-play of Rastafari, this honourable designation becomes 'honour the rebel'.

Marley is much more than a conventional national hero. He's an international icon who needs no further stamp of local state approval. In his own words, "Dem a go tired fi see mi face (They are going to be tired of seeing my face). Can't get me out of the race." Bob Marley's face on the Internet, on tee shirts, billboards, screens - big and small - signifies not only his own charismatic power, but also the global reach of Jamaican popular culture.

Heroically riding the waves of anger, Rita Marley has declared that it was Bob Marley's wish to be buried in Ethiopia. The occasion of his 60th birthday is the right symbolic moment. And, indeed, repatriation to Africa has been a fundamental principle in Rastafari philosophy. The sense of exile in the wilderness of captivity motivates the sustained longing to return to ancestral lands.

So I have to visit Nine Miles, St Ann, in the not-too-distant future. It's a very daunting pilgrimage to Ethiopia.

Carolyn Cooper is professor of literary and cultural studies at the University of the West Indies, Mona, Jamaica. She is the author of 'Noises in the Blood: Orality, Gender and the 'Vulgar' Body of Jamaican Popular Culture (1993); and Sound Clash: Jamaican Dancehall Culture at Large (2004)'. She is the current coordinator of the university's International Reggae Studies Centre, an academic project she initiated.