It’s fitting that a biopic of a musician who sang about love would come out on Valentine’s Day. "Bob Marley: One Love," hitting theaters Feb. 14, shows how Marley (played by Kingsley Ben-Adir) and his reggae band The Wailers sought to use music to unite a divided country during the Cold War.
"One Love" takes place from 1976 to 1978 during a period of fierce political divisions in Jamaica. The country had been independent since 1962, and there were two main political parties: the People's National Party (PNP)—represented by the socialist prime minister Michael Manley—and the Jamaica Labor Party (JLP)—represented by the capitalist politician Edward Seaga. The U.S. government saw Manley as a concern because of his democratic socialist politics. “He was hanging out with Fidel Castro trying to find out how he's running his country so that he might run Jamaica in that way, and the United States did not want to have another Cuba so close to its borders,” says Matt Jenson, who teaches about the politics of Bob Marley’s music at the Berklee College of Music. In the tense political climate of the time in Jamaica, violence regularly broke out among supporters of both politicians.
Marley did not endorse either political party; he endorsed reggae music, songs that spoke out about poverty, life in the ghettos, social injustices, as well as political tensions—and he had the ear of the island’s politicians. In the film, Marley fields questions from reporters who are asking him why reggae has become so popular. In fact, as TIME wrote in 1976, “Reggae has not, of course, solved Jamaica's problems by scrutinizing them, but it has grabbed the attention of the island's politicians, who now realize that the easiest way to reach the electorate is through music.” Marley and many of the island’s musicians adhered to Rastafarianism, which was both a political movement that worked to make sure Jamaica’s culture reflected its people’s African roots and a religion of followers who believed that Jesus will come back as a Black man. As TIME described Marley’s influence in 1976, “Marley is Jamaica's superstar. He rivals the government as a political force