Government wanted to buy Steffens’ reggae archives

Minister of Culture, Gender, Entertainment and Sport, Olivia Grange, while commending Downsound CEO Joe Bogdanovich for purchasing the largest collection of reggae artefacts in the world, noted that "rights issues" made the Government press pause on its interest years ago.

Owned by historian and author Roger Steffens, the huge catalogue includes the largest collection of Bob Marley memorabilia in the world.

"Well, I'm happy that Joe spent the money to purchase it," Grange told THE WEEKEND STAR.

"At one time as the Government we looked at it, but there were some rights issues. I don't know if those have been resolved ... but it is one thing to buy the catalogue, but you have to know that you can use it in a particular way, based on all the rights issues being resolved," she explained. Grange did not specify what were the issues involved, however, the Bob Marley name and brand are fiercely protected on a global level.

Steffens said that the Institute of Jamaica first offered to buy the catalogue in 2001 and he "hasn't raised the price since", but declined to say exactly how much it was sold for when the deal with Bogdanovich closed in mid-July. Other interested Jamaican parties, he said, were the Marley family and businessman Michael Lee Chin, "but in the long run nothing came of it".

The reggae enthusiast and Bogdanovich have been in discussions regarding the sale of the archives since 2018. Steffens shared that a museum will be built in Jamaica to house the memorabilia, which includes thousands of vinyl records among the hundreds of thousands of items such as clippings, books, posters, T-shirts and paintings. He will be appointed curator emeritus of the museum. Grange commended Bogdanovich for the museum plan.

"We already have a music museum and we are relocating it from the limited space where it is into the exhibition hall of the Institute of Jamaica and ultimately we will be building a stand-alone facility to house the museum," Grange shared.

- Y.P.