Bob Marley – who would have been 66 this Sunday, February 6, had he not passed away 30 years ago this May – was known to have credited his laid-back sense of peace with himself, and his need to right the wrongs of a divided world, to his own multiracial background. He was born of a white father and a black Jamaican mother, and always had a sense of himself in the same realm as the great equality crusader, Martin Luther King, Jr., who was assassinated while Marley was still starting his career with his seminal band, the Wailers.

“I don’t have prejudice against meself. My father was a white and my mother was black,” he said. “Them call me half-caste or whatever. Me don’t dip on nobody’s side. Me don’t dip on the black man’s side nor the white man’s side. Me dip on God’s side, the one who create me and cause me to come from black and white.”

Marley, who played the Mid-Hudson Civic Center in Poughkeepsie on his Kaya tour in July 1978, is considered the first great Third World superstar, a musical legend – and yet also an international figure of supreme moral courage. This Saturday, February 5, Bob Marley’s massive legacy will be celebrated – as it has been since 1984 – in the form of the 27th annual Woodstock Tribute to him featuring such au courant reggae acts as Crucial Massive, Squeeky Plus and Jamaica’s Starcade, all at the Bearsville Theater in Woodstock. Put on by Lea Boss of Free Spirit of Woodstock, the town’s long-lasting reggae store Upstate Reggae and WDST Radio Woodstock, these annual events have become soulful remembrances of Marley’s One Love ethos – and a perfect antidote to the doldrums and upstate cabin fever that many start feeling this time of year.

Doors open early, around 7 p.m. The Bearsville Theater is located out Route 212 just east of the hamlet center of Woodstock. For further information, call (845) 679-4406 or visit www.bearsvilletheater.com. You can also try Boss at (845) 679-3382, http://wavelinks.net/reggae.htm or http://wavelinks.net/spirit.htm.