Jamaica Cultural Development Commission (JCDC) Bob Marley Ital Food Festival, Concert and Fashion Show, held at Louise Bennett Garden Theatre, Hope Road, on Sunday, February 4. - Winston Sill photos

BY Mel Cooke, Freelance Writer

As a week of celebrations for Bob Marley's 62nd birthday began on Sunday at the Ranny Williams Centre, Hope Road, St. Andrew, the 2007 Ital Food Festival, Concert and Fashion Show deviated from the Tuff Gong's music only three times.

The first was when the male quartet A2O (Against All Odds) made a smooth transition between fashion and song, serenading four young ladies with She's Still Loving Me and giving each individual attention before they exited the stage. Their original Never Gonna Change, also done to a recorded track, was done because 'she left and she wanted to come back but it was too late'.

"Yu know how much chance she get? Me forgive har 70 times seven already," one singer said before they started the song, the ladies squealing as one singer stepped forward as he hit a falsetto.

There were also cheers when little Shakelia Williams, her back to the audience, undulated her slender torso at the beginning of her dance to Indian music. And Shanae Lawson, Miss Tiny Tot Jamaica Caribbean 2006, danced to Busy Signal's Step Out, the song being cut well short of the child-unfriendly chorus.

Those songs apart, though, it was Marley all the way on Sunday, just down the road from his 56 Hope Road former home and now protected National Heritage Site and Bob Marley Museum. Whether in dance from the opening Arnett Gardens Dance Troupe, three young men in black and white horizontally striped body tights undulating to Natural Mystic and Crazy Baldheads, or in fashion as mostly girls and young ladies modelled to Coming In From the Cold, Redemption Song, Simmer Down and many others, Marley's music was a staple throughout the brief concert.

Aliyah Young brought back memories of Marley, decked out in a blue jeans outfit and fake locks from a tam tumbling past her shoulders, one lady in the audience commenting 'attitude plus tax'. Young's poem ended with her prancing across the stage, singing One Love.

And One Love anchored the festival, as models came on stage to A20 singing Could You Be Loved, the stage eventually a mass of most of the night's performers waving to the Marley staple to answering waves from a few persons in the audience.

Marley figured beside the food from Earl's Juice Garden, Country Farm House Soy Products, Natural Juice Bar, Eden Vegetarian Restaurant, Vegetarian Delites and Everything Natural, the lyrics of some of what were titled his 'revolutionary songs', including Slave Driver, printed larger than life in the Jamaica Cultural Development Commission's (JCDC) booth.