Longtime reggae collector, Bob Marley expert, radio host and author Roger Steffens, 82, has purchased his monumental archive of vinyl and other memorabilia — widely regarded as incorporating the largest and most comprehensive array of Marley artifacts on the planet — for an undisclosed “multimillion-dollar” sum. The archive, which has previously been valued at up to $3 million, was acquired for an undisclosed sum by Josef Bogdanovich, a first cousin of the late director Peter, and one of four heirs to his grandfather Martin’s StarKist Tuna fortune.
“It’s a privilege and a huge duty to Jamaica’s heritage,” Bogdanovich tells Number of the acquisition. “It’s a monumental undertaking, but the work is so highly effective.”
Steffens, who has been identifying Bogdanovich for more than 4 years, says: “Of all the people who have tried to buy this collection over the last 37 years, he is probably the most qualified to do all the essential things to protect and publicize, and to return this history to Jamaica without any political control.”
Now in his early eighties, Bogdanovich moved from California to Jamaica in 1999. There, he founded the Downsound label to record and promote reggae and dancehall artists such as Nanko, I-Maroon, Fantan Mojan and Jah Treatment. Over the years, he also acquired the summer Reggae Sumfest (the successor to Sunsplash) and the Montego Bay-based Sting festivals — and now he has a singular, world-class lineup, too.
“For me, it’s the artifacts that come directly from the people, the trinkets from all over the world” that make the gathering special, Bogdanovich says, including that he plans to place the artifacts in a museum he originally wanted to build along the Catherine Corridor Leisure Heart, home of Sumfest, though certain geological issues forced him to look elsewhere for a location. He now plans to build it in Montego Bay, and has hired Robert Santelli of the Rock and Roll Corridor of Fame and Grammy Museum as a creative consultant. While there’s already a Bob Marley Museum in the Jamaican capital of Kingston, Steffens’ archive is recognized as the largest collection of the legendary musician’s artifacts on the planet.
Steffens’ collection began in 1973 with a used copy of the Wailers’ first album, “Catch a Fireplace,” which he bought after reading a fawning article in Rolling Stone. He noticed the enduring Jimmy Cliff film “The Tougher They Come” the following night, and its soundtrack became the second item in the collection.
“Reggae and ska stuff like Millie Small’s ‘My Boy Lollipop’ and Desmond Dekker’s ‘Israelites’ were considered novelty before that,” Steffens explains. “However, 1973 was the beginning of reggae in America. I was always interested in both the religious and political aspects of the music.”
Steffens eventually moved to Los Angeles to pursue an acting career, and eventually became a voice actor and audiobook narrator, as well as a longtime radio host of KCRW’s “Reggae Beat” and the syndicated program “Reggae Beat Worldwide”, as well as a photographer, editor of The Beat periodical, and author of eight books about Marley. He exposed his archives to the general public for the first time in 2001, curating the collection with an extensive eight-month exhibition in Long Beach, California, dubbed “The World of Reggae”, which coincided with Marley receiving a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
Browsing through the vast array is like stepping inside Steffens’s head, with its barrage of reggae posters, album covers, pins, cassette tapes and interviews, rare white-label Trojan releases, periodical articles, folk art, Haile Selassie’s work and memorabilia, including a signed and postmarked envelope commemorating his famous October 4, 1963, speech to the United Nations, the lines of which were set to music by Marley in “Battle.”
Other valuable possessions include a poster of Marley on July 21, 1978, at Berkeley’s Greek Theater autographed by Marley and the Wailers. When the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame borrowed it for an exhibition, it held the piece for $75,000, making it perhaps the most valuable single piece in the collection. There may also be a T-shirt from Marley’s famous 1978 “One Love” performance in Jamaica, where he famously joined hands with the island’s two political rivals, Michael Manley and Edward Seaga.
Steffens also boasts a trove of exclusive Marley singles on the Tuff Gong label, along with a number of white-label records pressed for sound methods only and never intended for the general public. One is a duplicate of “Knotty (no Natty) Dread,” credited to Bob Marley, Wailers & I Three, another handwritten label, “Pink Pink Pink,” written by Marley himself, eventually released as “Redder Than Pink.” There is also a photograph of Marley at the moment his shoe was punctured and his toe pricked by a French music journalist during a friendly soccer match in 1977, resulting in the discovery of the cancer that ultimately killed him.
Steffens estimates he has spent about $500,000 on his collection. “My voice acting and appearance paid for my reggae demeanor,” he admits. “From June 1973 onwards, everything I could find on reggae, Marley, Rastafari, Ethiopian history and the Bible, I collected. It’s priceless because with my own limited sources I was able to accumulate some treasures. (Selling) is my way of passing the torch.”
He first visited Jamaica in 1976, the week then-Prime Minister Michael Manley declared a state of emergency in anticipation of a US invasion. The military was mobilised, tanks were positioned at all major intersections and a curfew was imposed. Warned not to enter Kingston, Steffens braved pressure to end up in Marley’s personal archive, “the size of two telephone cubicles”, where a pickpocket, an infamous reggae singer and producer from the neighbourhood, nearly bilked him out of $400, only to sell him one of his personal singles under his jacket for $1.25.
Determined to find a permanent home for the collection, he obtained his first offering — for the low six figures — in 1987 from the New York Public Library’s Schomburg Institute for Research in Black Tradition in Harlem. Since then, he has entertained a few offers, but has gone with Bogdanovich because of their relationship and because he plans to settle it in Jamaica.
Stephen Davis and Timothy White, who have both written Bob Marley biographies, have used Steffens’ Reggae Archives to analyze their books, as have the producers and administrators of the Marley documentary and the current biopic “One Love,” along with about 80 different authors over the years. “People have come here from all over the world,” Steffens says. “It’s always been open to anyone who wants to use it. But I always wanted to keep it cheap so that someone would bring it to Jamaica.”