Bob Marley would have been 81 today. Some are taken from us much too soon.

I spotted this mural under a bridge in Flint, Michigan, back in 2002, one of hundreds of tributes to the reggae giant that I’ve come across in dozens of countries around the world. Four-and-a-half decades after his death, his remains one of the most recognized and respected faces on the planet. Indeed, you’ll be hard-pressed to find a corner of the world where Bob Marley as icon doesn’t appear – from a small, isolated village in El Salvador or Nigeria, to metropolises like Paris or New York, Bob Marley can be seen and heard virtually everywhere.

In addition to a couple obligatory Marley CDs, I paid my humble tribute today by listening to Kaya N’Gan Daya, Gilberto Gil’s 2002 homage to the Jamaican giant. Gil is perhaps the most widely respected singer/songwriter in Brazil’s broad and varied musical landscape, and his carefully selected 16 track selection was his personal tribute. One giant to another.

To fully appreciate the sincerity and respect with which Gil approached the project, one needs to know more about the musician who literally redefined Brazilian pop music and culture some six decades ago, giving it the international prominence, appeal and reach it holds today.

Gil is not your typical pop singer. In the late 1960s, he, along with singer and friend Caetano Veloso, co-founded the musical voice of Tropicalia, a nimble blend of samba, reggae, funk and jazz that defined the wider Tropicalismo art movement in Brazil that proved so powerful and spiritually uplifting to the country’s poverty-stricken and marginalized majority that both were jailed and subsequently exiled by Brazil’s authoritarian military regime in 1969. Like Marley’s rebel music style, Tropicalismo became the attitude for defiance and change in Brazil, and the face of Latin America’s largest country was changed forever. Coming full circle, Gil was named Brazil’s Minister of Culture in 2002, a position he held until 2008.

Gil’s voice can’t always match the passionate urgency of Marley’s –Whose can?– but there’s a distinctively earthy, organic edge in Gil’s vocal presence that not only compliments the Marley material, but adds an almost ethereal quality to the melodies he’s selected. He’s most successful with the songs that incorporate his unique blend of Brazilian flare –-from the melodically simple but elegantly beautiful treatment of Three Little Birds to the driving urgency of the Kaya N’Gan Daya (Kaya) intro. It’s sung partly in Portuguese, and Gil adds some strings and traditional Brazilian percussion to the mix. The high point is the anthemic No Woman No Cry (Nao Chore Mais), accompanied by Marley’s original vocal back-up trio, the I-Threes –-Rita Marley, Marcia Griffiths and Judy Mowatt (who appear on most tracks).

Carlos Jones, a friend of mine in Cleveland, Ohio, and a talented and passionate musician in his own right, recorded his own tribute to Marley, Torchbearer, a few decades ago.

“Each of us, that were touched by (Marley) in our lifetimes, we carry a part of that too,” Carlos says.

“Each of us in our own way, whether we’re musicians or not, we can carry that little bit of light, or truth, forward. Whatever it was that it made us feel, and try to pass it on.

“Marley was a torchbearer. When he passed on, he passed the torch. But not just to one person – to everyone within earshot. To carry a little candle flame and help illuminate the darkness.”

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Today’s Pic du Jour, the site’s 33rd straight, was snapped in Flint, Michigan, USA, in July 2002.