Bob Marley gets statue in hard-rocking Serbian village (Feature)

By Ksenija Prodanovic Aug 21, 2008, 10:30 GMT

Belgrade - An underdeveloped but hard-rocking Serbian village was set to reveal a sculpture to the Jamaican reggae icon Bob Marley on Saturday and so join others in the region already boasting or planning celebs-in-bronze.

The Marley monument, made by Croatian artist Davor Dukic, is to be unveiled on the second and final day of the two-day Rock Village festival, launched in Banatski Sokolac in 2005 in a bid to bring the ex-Yugoslav rock elite to a rural stage.

The 2-metre-tall statute of the small musician who has had a huge impact on global music would acknowledge 'admiration for Marley's musical opus, as well as his contribution to freedom and equality,' organizers said on their site www.rockvillage.org.

The idea came from the organizers, but local authorities went happily along, village mayor Milan Agbaba said in a recent interview with the daily Politika.

In the choice of the best personality for the monument, Marley, who died of cancer in 1981 at the age of 36, defeated two other 1960s-era rock icons who died young, guitarist Jimi Hendrix and singer Jim Morrison.

Due to attend the festival and the ceremony are regional dignitaries from the world of music, including both performers as well as critics, in addition to 'friends' from Jamaica, Ghana and Suriname.

Presentations of statues of real and fictional personalities has become a regional fad, amusing people but also drawing the eye of international media and visitors to otherwise obscure places.

Before Sokolac, a place 70 kilometres north-east of Belgrade that is unmarked even on large wall maps of Serbia, boosted its renown with Marley, a monument to the film character Rocky Balboa was erected in 2007 in the equally unknown nearby village of Zitiste.

Also in the area along Serbia's border with Romania is Medja, claiming to be the birthplace of the US Olympian swimmer Johnny Weismuller, better known for his role in Tarzan films. Naturally, Medja is preparing a monument to Weismuller, or Tarzan.

West of Serbia, in Bosnia, a bronze statue of Bruce Lee - Hong Kong's deceased kung-fu spaghetti movie king, but also a true martial arts icon - stares across Mostar, a major city, since 2005.

In amore subdued manner, the authorities in Novi Sad, Serbia's second-largest city, named a street after John Lennon in 2005, on the 25th anniversary of the Beatle's assassination. The re-naming of the street was however later challenged by anti-Western nationalists.