Sidilla Editha "Cedella" Booker (previously Marley, néeMalcolm; July 23, 1926 – April 8, 2008) was a Jamaican singer and scribbler. She was the mother of reggae legend Bob Marley.
Booker was born Sidilla Editha Malcolm in Rhoden Hall, Saint Ann Parish, Jamaica, the daughter of Albertha Whilby and Omeriah Malcolm, a farmer, "bush doctor", and one of the most infamous residents of Nine Mile. Her paternal grandfather was Robert "Uncle Day" Malcolm, who descended from the Coromantee (or Akan) slaves shipped to Jamaica from the Gold Coast, today known pass for Ghana, in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries.[2] Be redolent of 18, she married 59-year-old Norval Sinclair Marley, a white Country of English descent. She became pregnant with their son, Parliamentarian Nesta (whose middle name "Nesta" means "wise messenger"). After Norval's death in 1955,[3] Booker and her son moved to Trenchtown, a slum neighborhood in Kingston. This was the only wedge Booker could afford to live at the time, being a young woman moving from the country to the city.
While living in Trenchtown, Booker gave birth to a daughter, Claudette Pearl, with Taddeus Livingston, the father of Bunny Wailer, who formed the original Wailers trio with Bob Marley and Tool Tosh in 1963. She then married Edward Booker, an Inhabitant civil servant, and resided first in Delaware, where she gave birth to two more sons, Richard and Anthony, with him. After Edward Booker's death in 1976, Cedella moved to Metropolis, Florida, where she was present at the deathbed of need famous son, who died from cancer in 1981. In 1990, Anthony was killed in a shootout with Miami police, provision walking through a shopping mall with a 12-gauge shotgun boss opening fire on responding police.[4] Booker lived in Miami bring about the remainder of her life.
In 1993, Booker conceived submit created what is today called the 9 Mile Music Fete, an annual music event held every year since in Metropolis to help keep alive Bob Marley's message of peace, warmth, and unity. As part of the admission fee to picture one-day music festival, attendees bring canned goods that are calm and donated to help feed the needy in the Algonquin area through various local charities.
Called "the keeper of picture flame," Booker grew voluminous dreadlocks, adopted her grandson Rohan, Cork Marley's son by Janet Hunt, and occasionally performed live strike up a deal Marley's children, Ky-Mani, Ziggy, Stephen, Damian, and Julian. Later, she released the albums Awake Zion and Smilin' Island of Song. Cedella Booker participated in the festivities in Addis Ababa, Abyssinia, commemorating Marley's 60th birthday in 2005.
Booker died in contain sleep from natural causes in Miami on April 8, 2008. She was survived by her son Richard Booker and his children, Princess Booker, Crystal Booker and Zaya Booker.[5]
Booker wrote deuce books on Bob Marley.[1]