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Robert Nesta Marley OM was a musician and vocalist from Jamaica. His musical career was distinguished by merging elements of reggae, ska, and rocksteady, as well as his distinctive voice and compositional approach. He is considered one of the pioneers of reggae. For more than a decade, Marley’s contributions to music expanded the awareness of Jamaican music throughout the world, and he became a global presence in popular culture. Marley became renowned as a Rastafari icon during the course of his career, and he blended spirituality into his music. He is also regarded as a global emblem of Jamaican music, culture, and identity, and his vocal advocacy for democratic social reforms proved contentious. Marley escaped an attempted assassination in his house in 1976, which was suspected to be politically motivated. He was also a supporter of marijuana legalization and a proponent of Pan-Africanism.

Marley began his professional musical career in 1963, after creating Bob Marley and the Wailers, in Nine Mile, British Jamaica. The Wailing Wailers’ debut studio album, The Wailing Wailers, was released in 1965 and featured the track “One Love/People Get Ready,” which became a worldwide hit and established the group as a rising reggae star. The Wailers went on to make eleven more studio albums, initially using louder instrumentation and singing, but in the late 1960s and early 1970s, the group began using rhythmic-based song structure, which corresponded with the singer’s conversion to Rastafari. During this time, Marley moved to London, and the Wailers released the album The Best of The Wailers, which symbolized their artistic transition (1971).

After the publication of the albums Catch a Fire and Burnin’ (both in 1973), the trio gained international acclaim and established a name as touring musicians. After the Wailers disbanded a year later, Marley went on to release solo work under the Wailers’ moniker. Natty Dread, his first studio album, and Rastaman Vibrations, his follow-up, both garnered favorable reviews (1976). Marley escaped an assassination attempt at his home in Jamaica a few months after the album’s release, prompting him to flee permanently to London. He released the album Exodus (1977) while in London, which had elements of blues, soul, and British rock and was a financial and critical success.

Marley died on May 11, 1981, after being diagnosed with acral lentiginous melanoma on his toenail in 1977. Fans from all around the globe mourned his death, and he was given a state funeral in Jamaica. Legend, a greatest hits album published in 1984, went on to become the best-selling reggae album of all time. Marley is also one of the most successful musicians of all time, having sold more than 75 million records worldwide. He was posthumously decorated by Jamaica with a designated Order of Merit shortly after his death. He was elected to the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 1994. On Rolling Stone’s list of the 100 Greatest Artists of All Time, he was named No. 11.

Norval Sinclair Marley and Cedella Malcolm gave birth to Robert Nesta Marley on February 6, 1945, on his maternal grandfather’s property in Nine Mile, Saint Ann Parish, Jamaica. Norval Marley was born in Crowborough, East Sussex, England, and was a resident of Clarendon Parish at the time. His family claimed Syrian Jewish ancestry. Norval claimed to have been a captain in the Royal Marines, although he was working as a plantation supervisor when he married Cedella Malcolm, an Afro-Jamaican who was 18 at the time. Bob Marley’s full name is Robert Nesta Marley, while other sources refer to him as Nesta Robert Marley, citing a tale about a Jamaican passport official who reversed Marley’s first and middle names when he was still a boy because Nesta sounded like a girl’s name. Norval supported his wife and child financially, but he seldom saw them because he was frequently gone. Bob Marley went to Stepney Primary and Junior High School, which is located in Saint Ann’s catchment area. Bob Marley’s father died of a heart attack at the age of 70 in 1955, when he was ten years old. Marley’s mother eventually married Edward Booker, a United States federal servant, giving him two half-brothers, Richard and Anthony.

In Nine Mile, Bob Marley and Neville Livingston (after known as Bunny Wailer) were boyhood buddies. While in Stepney Primary and Junior High School, they began to play music together. Marley relocated to Trenchtown, Kingston, with his mother when he was 12 years old. She and Thadeus Livingston (Bunny Wailer’s father) had a daughter together, Claudette Pearl, who was Bob and Bunny’s younger sister. Now that Marley and Livingston were sharing a home in Trenchtown, their musical horizons widened to include the latest R&B from US radio stations with transmissions reaching Jamaica, as well as new ska songs. Marley quickly found himself in a vocal group alongside Bunny Wailer, Peter Tosh, Beverley Kelso, and Junior Braithwaite, thanks to his move to Trenchtown. Joe Higgs, a member of the popular vocal duo Higgs and Wilson, lived on 3rd St., and his singing partner Roy Wilson had been reared by Junior Braithwaite’s grandmother. Higgs and Wilson would rehearse in the back yards of the houses between 2nd and 3rd Streets, and soon, Marley (now lived on 2nd St.), Junior Braithwaite, and the rest of the neighborhood flocked to see them. At the time, Marley and the others didn’t play any instruments and preferred to be a vocal harmony quartet. Higgs was happy to assist them in developing their vocal harmonies, but more crucially, he had begun teaching Marley how to play guitar, laying the foundation for some of the genre’s most popular songs.

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