The domain name reggae.com was registered in 1995 and is being sold for upwards of $300,000. The name sits idly without an active website. Similarly, reggae’s most valuable artifacts are housed by archivists Roger Steffens in his private seven room basement in Los Angeles, packed from floor to ceiling. That entire collection may finally be seeing the light of day as it was recently purchased by Reggae Sumfest producer, Joe Bogdanovich. The announcement was made during an interview with Winford Williams on Saturday.
Bogdanivich plans to integrate the unreleased reggae archives into a larger plan that would see the tourist-heavy Montego Bay turned into a concert city.
He said, “Well we are looking to make it the most exciting performance center in the Caribbean on par with Coachella and the others, and we are bringing Roger Steffens archives.”
The archives include exclusive rare Bob Marley images, concert materials, and memorabilia.
“So we worked out a deal and I am planning on bringing that which will be a big attraction to come to Montego bay.”
“It will be permanently placed there, at Catherine Hall, I bought it, yeah it’s a big investment.”
Bogdanovich said it is Steffens desire to have the archives in Jamaica.
“He wants it here, we have a good relationship, he thinks that maybe I know what I am doing and he is gonna be very much involved. It’s just unusual and it’s one of the ways we are planning on developing that Cathrine Hall site.”
There are reportedly 12,000 vynil records and CDs, 10,000 posters and flyers and 12,000 hours of tapes, also tens of thousands of reggae photographs, 30,000 reggae fliers from all over the world, 2,000 reggae posters (many of them signed by the original artists), 140 cubic feet of alphabetized clippings, and an array of invaluable books and magazines.
Steffens’ Marley inventory is now computerized since a failed negotiation to sell Micheal Lee-Chin’s foundation in 2008.
The Billionaire NCB Bank owner was in talks to buy the world’s largest collection of Bob Marley memorabilia and donate the more than 200,000 items to a yet-to-be-established National Museum of Music in Jamaica. The possibility of the deal drew comments from the then Minister of culture in Jamaica Maxine Henry-Wilson who said,
“We hail Mr. Lee Chin … (the acquisition) has offered the Jamaican people another opportunity to revel in the achievement of this cultural icon.”
She further commented that Marley created an identity for Jamaicans that has helped “increase their perception of themselves and pride in their heritage.”
Steffens told the Jamaica Star at the time that Mr. Lee-Chin’s paid offer was “a figure commensurate with 31 years of work.”
That ‘figure’ was never paid and those negotiations between Roger and Chin came to an end when Chin’s brother Wayne Chen, who represented the foundation said Steffens asked for too much money. The couldn’t agree on a $400,000 difference in valuation.
“We agreed that he (Steffens) would bring in a valuator, someone who has done work with the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. I think the price on everything was US$1.6M but Roger wanted over US$2 million and we couldn’t go up to that,” Chen told the Jamaica Gleaner.
Meanwhile the “Bob Marley One Love Experience” is set to open in July for a six-week run at the Lighthouse Immersive Artspace in Toronto Canada.
The show features six rooms that bring together art, music, photos, memorabilia and what are described as “multi-sensory” experiences, Lighthouse Immersive said in a news release.
The immersive experience made its debut in London, England, in February.
Built in 1985, The Bob Marley Museum is the most popular museum in Jamaica.
Museums make US$15bn annually according to Statista.
