HALF the story about reggae's most successful and influential superstar has never been told - until now.

Next Friday, Bob Marley biographer and reggae archivist Roger Steffens will be giving a multimedia presentation about the legendary musician's life.

The show will be held at the Ruth Seaton James Centre for the Performing Arts and runs for two days and is presented by local promoters Rhythm at Random. Partial proceeds from the event will go to the Mirrors programme for Bermuda youth.

Latoya Ahknaton and Brian Hetherington, owners of Rhythm at Random, said: "People think they know the whole story of Bob Marley, but they don't know the half of it."

They said people interested in Marley's music should come and see the presentation as they would learn things about his life they never knew before and it would clear up some myths concerning the legend.

Citing an example, they said: "Most people think Bob Marley's father was an Englishman, but the reality is he was a white Jamaican."

Mr. Steffens is known to have probably the world's largest reggae collection, holding more than 300,000 titles, tapes, records, CDs, video and memorabilia and his archive is so vast it is housed in two separate buildings in Los Angeles.

He has given presentations to more than 1,000 schools, universities and lecture halls around the world but this will be his first trip to Bermuda.

The multimedia presentation will include a two-and-a-half-hour presentation of films and videos narrated in person by Mr. Steffens and will also feature select unreleased Marley tracks that most people have never heard before.

Film clips will include previously unreleased interviews, a clip of Marley and Peter Tosh playing the tune Nice Time on guitars at the Tuff Gong studio as well as a clip of Marley receiving the United Nations Peace Medal in 1978. There will also be a questions-and-answers session with the audience.

When the presentation was made in Jamaica, at the end of the show Mr. Steffens received a one-minute standing ovation from the crowd who had been captivated by the half of the story that had never been told before.

Mr. Steffens, who lives in Los Angeles, was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1942 and was raised in New Jersey. He first became interested in reggae music in 1973 after reading an article in Rolling Stone magazine entitled Babylon on a Thin Wire. Following that he bought the album Catch A Fire, an album he says he didn't take "off the record player for three weeks".

His love for the music was enhanced when he saw the Jimmy Cliff movie The Harder They Come and after seeing the Jamaican film he bought the movie soundtrack and has been jamming ever since.

Mr. Steffens was good friends with Marley and wrote his biography as well as taking countless photos of the godfather of reggae. Marley gave Mr. Steffens the nickname Rojah when they were touring together in 1979 as part of the Survival tour.

Mr. Steffens' passion for the music led him to co-host a reggae show called Reggae Beat on KCRW in LA from 1979 until 1987 and also co-hosted Reggae Beat International from 1983 until 1987 which was syndicated to 130 radio stations internationally.

In 1982 he became the founding editor for The Beat magazine, the world's leading publication on reggae, African, Caribbean and world music. He has written hundreds of articles that have appeared in countless publications such as the Jamaica Observer, New York Times, Chicago Tribune and the Los Angeles Times. He also co-wrote the Bunny Wailer autobiography Old Fire Sticks after Wailer asked him to help write about his life.

Mr. Steffens has written more than five books and has been a contributing writer and photographer for numerous other publications. Along with being chairman of the Reggae Grammy Committee, he has also worked inside the industry and helped to produce, by giving some of his rare singles, the Complete Wailers 1967-1972 box set, a project that Mr. Steffens described as being "one of the projects of which I am most proud in my life. For the first time, all the rarest seven-inch singles from the Wailers prolific late 1960s to the early '70s period are available to the public at fair prices."

Mr. Steffens is critical of the modern dancehall scene, saying dancehall is "discovering the blatant fact that slackness has done no one any good and destroyed almost all the foreign touring markets for Jamaican acts".

He added: "The language barrier is too profound. Dancehall is the thickest of patois and Japanese people, for example, cannot penetrate its lyrics as they could so much more easily with Bob."

He also said he thinks reggae and dancehall should have separate categories at the Grammy Awards, adding: "Dancehall came and the beats were different, two different kinds of music with two different intentions. How fair is it to put Lady Saw and Burning Spear in the same category?"

Speaking about his multimedia presentation and his collection, Mr. Steffens said: "I couldn't be more excited. It's the culmination of a lifetime of collecting and a chance to share that collection with thousands of people. I've been building my collection of reggae artefacts since 1973, and I now have what is arguably the largest reggae music archive in the world.

"Specialising in Bob Marley and the Wailers, my archive is located in two separate buildings in Los Angeles. Included in my collection are thousands of hours of unreleased tapes, and an exhaustive collection of vinyl and CDs and hundreds of videos.

"Much of what I have is one-of-a-kind or never-before-heard. I have had bootleggers offer me a fortune for some of the music I have, but I have resisted, knowing that selling to these pirates would bring bad karma.

"I have remained friendly (and neutral) to all the parties in the Marley story; they all respect my thorough knowledge of reggae history. I have built cherished friendships with the important figures in reggae music, friendships which I would never jeopardise, even for all the money in the world."

Speaking about the Steffens multimedia show, Cedella Booker, Marley's mother, said: "Every time I see your show, I learn something new about my son."

Carlos Santana said: "If Bob Marley is Jesus in these times, then Roger Steffens is Peter."

Latoya Ahknaton and Brian Hetherington hope people will enjoy the presentation and learn things they never new before about Bob Marley and they said: "People will be amazed and will walk away from this presentation with a better understanding of Bob Marley."

Doors open to the show next Friday at 6 p.m. and the show starts at 7.30 p.m. There is a matinee show next Saturday for students only that starts at 2 p.m. and that night the show will start at 7.30 p.m. Tickets are $25 from Sound Stage and Double W Entertainment or $30 at the door. Student tickets for the Saturday matinee are $12.