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Marley and his widow, Rita, now 60, were struggling musicians when they welcomed Ziggy, Stephen, and daughter Cedella, now 39, in the late '60s and early '70s. (Their brood also includes Rita's daughter from a previous relationship, Sharon, 42.) As kids, Ziggy and Stephen grew up working-class in Kingston's Trenchtown ghetto.
''Our first school was an old bus — it was junk and then somebody made it into a school,'' Ziggy recalls a month after his brothers' show in Florida. ''As our father started to make more money, they put us in better schools,'' he continues, sitting behind the desk of his home office in Beverly Hills, where he lives with his wife/manager, Orly Agai, and their two children. (Altogether, Ziggy has five kids, including three from prior relationships; he also has cribs in Miami, Jamaica, the Bahamas, and Ghana.) ''Then we moved uptown [in Kingston], which is a nice area. So we started getting a little more toys, a little more food in the fridge.''
Between 1972 and 1981, Marley fathered eight children — Robbie, 35, Rohan, 35, Karen, 34, Stephanie, 33, Julian, 31, Ky-Mani, 31, Makeda, 26, and Damian — with as many women. Says Stephen: ''My mother comes from the ghetto. And in the ghetto where we come from, it is not strange for a man to have more than one woman. It's not the perfect situation for a woman, but she knows.''
Despite Marley's philandering, ''Sister Rita's house was like the family HQ,'' says Damian, who was raised by his mother, Cindy Breakspeare (Miss World 1976), in an affluent Kingston suburb. ''Come summertime, Christmastime, Easter, or whatever, you'd spend a couple of weeks there,'' he says. ''You might see Julian, Robbie, or whoever else might be down from America, England, or wherever. It was always the place you could go to find those roots.''
The siblings' unorthodox upbringing forged an impenetrable bond between them. ''We can speak with our eyes; we don't really have to say words,'' says Cedella, who heads the hipsterrific Miami-based clothing line Catch a Fire. ''It's like we're all twins.'' That was evident in Florida, where Julian joined his brothers on stage for a rendition of Marley's ''Could You Be Loved.'' Both before and after the show, the trio primarily interacted with one another, Damian's and Julian's girlfriends, and Stephen's kids. ''They have acquaintances, but very few friends,'' Cedella explains. ''Dad would always say, 'I don't want you to have any friends; I just want you to be friends with your brothers and sisters because at the end of the day, they're the only ones you can rely on.'''
Being Rastafarian has a lot to do with their standoffishness and unpretentious style (they prefer beads to bling and Adidas to Gucci). Rooted in the belief that Haile Selassie I, Ethiopian emperor from 1930 to 1974, was the messiah, they shun material excess in favor of earthly riches: family, community, and home. And while they're the heirs of an artist who ranked No. 13 on Forbes' 2006 list of Top-Earning Dead Celebrities, Ziggy, Stephen, and Damian still abide by the Rastafarian tenets of humility and modesty. ''We're privileged, but militant,'' says Stephen, who now lives within blocks of Damian and Cedella in Miami. He credits growing up in Jamaica — which remains their home base — with keeping them grounded. ''We had to know how to cook, iron — all of that. Me used to come from school, take off me uniform, go down to the cow pen, and milk them.''
Today, Marley's children are scattered throughout Miami, California, Philadelphia, and London. But through Ziggy's U.R.G.E. foundation, along with Marley's and Rita's namesake charities, they sponsor a multitude of community-service projects in Jamaica and Africa. ''People love them in Jamaica,'' says the island's preeminent female reggae star, Marcia Griffiths, who sang backup for Marley as a member of the I-Threes. ''They don't need to walk with security. They are loved because Bob was loved.''
NEXT PAGE: ''I found it very frightening, amazing, and beautiful...when I saw Steve's and Ziggy's kids on stage just like they used to do with Bob.''
