When I sat down with Rohan Marley ahead of The Whine Down—our cultural benefit experience supporting the Bob & Rita Marley Foundation’s hurricane relief efforts in Jamaica—our conversation moved quickly into the teachings that have shaped his life. Before we talked logistics, food, or philanthropy, he returned to something much older: a lesson from his brother Ziggy that changed the way he approached herb, intention, and the responsibility carried in his family name.
“One day my brother Ziggy said to me, ‘Why do you smoke? We know why we smoke. We make music,’” he told me. “We smoke with a purpose. You can’t just smoke herb just to smoke herb.”
The comment stayed with him. “This big brother shit is for real,” he said, laughing at the memory. “I started to understand the discipline of the herb and started to treat the herb more responsibly.”
That discipline threads through everything Rohan touches. And in true Marley fashion, the path to clarity wasn’t inherited—it was learned.
“Rastafari is a teaching,” he said. “And that’s not because your father’s Rastafari that you know the teachings. You have to learn the teachings yourself.”
His siblings—Ziggy, Stephen, Cedella, and Sharon—were immersed in the Ethiopian Orthodox Church and Rastafari traditions from early childhood. Their music, he explained, is more than creative expression. “For us, music is like church… you’re giving a sermon every time,” he said. “A lot of Bible study within yourself.”
That internal study eventually took him to Ethiopia, where he immersed himself more deeply in the principles of Rastafari and what he called ‘the teachings of the ancients’. Living there clarified not just the spiritual foundations he’d grown up around, but the discipline required to live them. When he returned …
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Author: Chef Nikki Steward / High Times
