BLACK SOCIAL HISTORY : THE LATE GREAT BOB MARLEY AN INTERNATIONAL BLACK SINGER : GOES INTO THE " HALL OF BLACK GENIUS "

Nesta Robert "Bob" Marley, OM (6 February 1945 – 11 May 1981) was a Jamaican singer-songwriter and musician. He was the rhythm guitarist and lead singer for the ska, rocksteady and reggae bands The Wailers (1963-1974) and Bob Marley & The Wailers (1974–1981). Marley remains the most widely known and the best-selling performer of reggae music, having sold more than 75 million albums worldwide.^[1] He is also credited with helping spread both Jamaican music and the Rastafari movement to a worldwide audience.^[2]
Marley's music was heavily influenced by the social issues of his homeland, and he is considered to have given voice to the specific political and cultural nexus of Jamaica. His best-known hits include "I Shot the Sheriff, "No Woman, No Cry", "Could You Be Loved, "Duppy Conqueror", "Stir It Up", "Get Up Stand Up", "Jammin", "Redemption Song", "One Love" and, "Three Little Birds", as well as the posthumous releases "Buffalo Soldier" and "Iron Lion Zion". The compilation album Legend (1984), released three years after his death, is reggae's best-selling album, going ten times Platinum which is also known as one Diamond in the U.S.,^[5] and selling 25 million copies worldwide.


Bob Marley was born in the village of Nine Mile, in Saint Ann Parish, Jamaica, as Nesta Robert Marley.A Jamaican passport official would later swap his first and middle names. He was of mixed race. His father, Norval Sinclair Marley, was a White English-Jamaican, whose family came from Sussex, England. Norval claimed to have been a captain in the Royal Marines He was a plantation overseer, when he married Cedella Booker, an Afro-Jamaican then 18 years old. Norval provided financial support for his wife and child, but seldom saw them, as he was often away on trips. In 1955, when Bob Marley was 10 years old, his father died of a heart attack at age 70^] Marley faced questions about his own racial identity throughout his life. He once reflected:

I don't have prejudice against meself. My father was a white and my mother was black. Them call me half-caste or whatever. Me don't deh pon nobody's side. Me don't deh pon the black man's side nor the white man's side. Me deh pon God's side, the one who create me and cause me to come from black and white.

The Bob Marley House in Nine Mile is a home that he shared with his mother during his youth

Although Marley recognised his mixed ancestry, throughout his life and because of his beliefs, he self-identified as a black African, following the ideas of Pan-African leaders. Marley stated that his two Marcus Garvey and Haile Selassie. A central theme in Bob Marley's message was the repatriation of black people to Zion, which in his view was Ethiopia, or more generally, Africa. In songs such as "Survival", "Babylon System", and "Blackman Redemption", Marley sings about the struggles of blacks and Africans against oppression from the West or "Babylon".

biggest influences were the African-centered
Marley met Neville Livingston (later changed to Bunny Wailer) in Nine Mile because Bob's mother had a daughter with Bunny's father, younger sister to both of them and also had a relationship with him. Marley and Livingston started to play music while he was still at school. Then Marley left Nine Mile when he was 12 with his mother to Trench Town, Kingston. While in Trench Town, he met up with Livingston again and they started to make music with Joe Higgs, a local singer and devout Rastafari. At a jam session with Higgs and Livingston, Marley met Peter McIntosh (later known as Peter Tosh), who had similar musical ambitions.^[17] In 1962, Marley recorded his first two singles, "Judge Not" and "One Cup of Coffee", with local music producer Leslie Kong. These songs, released on the Beverley's label under the pseudonym of Bobby Martell,^[18] attracted little attention. The songs were later re-released on the box set Songs of Freedom, a posthumous collection of Marley's work.