Bob Marley

Bob Marley was born on February 6, 1945 in Nine Miles, Saint Ann, Jamaica. His father, Norval Marley, was born in Jamaica in 1895 to a family originally from Sussex, England. He had been a soldier before becoming a plantation overseer, the job he held when he met Bob's mother, Cedella Booker, a black teenager from the north country. Cedella and Norval were to be married on June 9th, 1944. Approximately a week before the wedding, however, Norval informed Cedella that his chronic hernia had begun to trouble him and as a result he would be changing jobs and moving to Kingston. Because Norval's affluent English family disdained mixed race relationships, he never got to know his son and saw him only once. Robert Nesta (Bob) Marley went on to transcended the humility of his rural humble beginnings to become not only a million-selling artist and stadium-filling entertainer but a nearly religious figure whose pleas for brotherhood and justice achieved universal status.

At the young age of 16 he started singing professionally, releasing his first single "Judge Not" on the Beverley's Label, under the names Robert Marley and Bobby Martell. However "Judge Not" and its follow-up "One Cup Of Coffee" were not successful. Due to his musical hunger he asked Joe Higgs to tutor him, Joe Higgs was a recording artist who coached local youngsters like Marley, Bunny Livingstone, and Peter Tosh (who would become The Wailers) for free. Signed in 1963 to Coxsone Dodd's Studio One Label, The Wailers saw their first release, "Simmer Down," become an instant number 1. During the next two-and-a-half years, the group recorded over a hundred songs, and at one point in 1965 they held five of the top ten slots on the Jamaican charts.

Noticing that they were not getting enough of the money made from there records, they formed their own label, Wail 'n Soul 'm, in 1966. The Wailers continued a series of local hits, with little financial remuneration. Following the album "Best of the Wailers" with producer Leslie Kong (which may have lead to his own death), they joined forces with the seminal oddball producer, Lee Perry, and produced an amazing series of singles that are collected under a variety of names and remain their finest hour.

In 1972, Island Records president Chris Blackwell signed The Wailers to a record contract, allowing them to release records under there new label, Tuff Gong, but after there first two albums with Island, the group broke up, leaving Marley at the head of the band (now named Bob Marley and the Wailers), to which he added a female backing trio, The I-Threes (Rita Marley, Judy Mowatt, and Marcia Griffiths).

During his raise to fame Marley made his beliefs in Rastafari, well known to the observing public. Most ignorant observers viewed Marley as a long-haired, Herb smoking trouble-maker, but the younger, more understanding youth say him as a leader. Almost assassinated in 1976 in his Kingston home at 56 Hope Road, Marley was given the UN Peace Medal on behalf of 500 million Africans in 1978 for his humanitarian achievements. He headlined a Peace Concert that same year in Jamaica, bringing together Prime Minister Michael Manley and Edward Seaga, the leader of the opposition. But his greatest honor came when he was invited to headline the Zimbabwe Independence Celebrations in 1980.

In July 1977, Marley was found to have a wound on his right big toe, which he thought was from a football injury. The wound would not completely heal, and his toenail later fell off during a soccer game. It was then that the correct diagnosis was made. Marley actually had a form of skin cancer, malignant melanoma, which grew under his toenail.
Marley was advised to get his toe amputated, but he refused because of his Rastafarian beliefs that the body must be whole, that to have an amputation would be a sin, that his faith would ensure him living forever regardless of the cancer and because he saw medical doctors as samfai, confidence men who cheat the gullible by pretending to have the power of witchcraft. He also was concerned about the impact the operation would have on his dancing; amputation would profoundly affect his career at a time when greater success was close at hand. Still, Marley based this refusal on his Rastafarian beliefs, saying, "Rasta no abide amputation. I don't allow a mon ta be dismantled." (Catch a Fire, Timothy White) He did have surgery to try to excise the cancer cells. The cancer was kept secret from the wider public.

The cancer spread to his brain, his lungs and his stomach. During the Uprising Tour in the fall of 1980, while trying to break into the US market, he collapsed while jogging in NYC's Central Park. This was after two shows at Madison Square Garden. The illness made him unable to continue with the tour. Marley sought help, and decided to go to Munich in order to receive treatment from controversial cancer specialist Josef Issels for several months, but it was to no avail.

Months before his death he was baptised into the Ethiopian Orthodox Church and took the name Berhane Selassie (meaning the Light of the Holy Trinity in Amharic). Then a month before his death, he was awarded the Jamaican Order of Merit. He wanted to spend his final days in Jamaica but he became too ill on the flight home from Germany and had to land in Miami. He died at Cedars of Lebanon Hospital in Miami, Florida on May 11, 1981. His funeral in Jamaica was a dignified affair with combined elements of Ethiopian Orthodoxy and Rastafari. He is buried in a crypt at Nine Miles, near his birthplace, with his Gibson guitar, a bud of marijuana and a Bible.

Bob Marley's music and legend have gone from strength to strength in the years since his early death and continue to produce a huge stream of revenue for his estate, while also bringing him a nearly mythic status in music history. He remains enormously popular and well known all over the world, and particularly so in Africa. In 1993, Marley was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Time magazine chose Marley and the Wailers' album "Exodus" as the greatest album of the 20th century.

Chris Blackwell on Bob Marley
Bob is somebody who was an incredible role model. Anybody you talk to, who has witnessed him, knows he really led by example. He was always on time for things-- which is hardly a Jamaican trait.
I went on a lot of the 1980 tour and he was always the first one on the bus. Traditionally, the star is the last one on the bus, if he isn't going in a limo. If there were a lot of people and they had to fly economy, he would travel with them. He never put himself in a position where he would be seen as being different from anybody else.
In that respect, he was somebody who lived up to the example of the leaders of all the main religions: there is one quality all such figures have, which is humility. And Bob really had that natural humility. He was also a natural leader. Absolutely, truly natural.

Rita Marley on Bob.
Bob was a servant of God. He would always say that. I would say to him, "Bob, you're so great, so special," and he would reply, "I'm not special: this is Jah works and whatever I'm doing is for Jah." Other times I would tell him "Bob, you're so good: the work you are doing is so differnent." And he would always say, "You're crazy, man: this is not hard."

I came to acknowledge him as someone who was so different. It wasn't about just being great: it was about being really different. And at that same time being able to maintain a certain humility, which was taken for granted by most of his friends, and by those who would keep coming to him: just nipping, nipping, begging, begging...

He would always make himself accessible to different types of characters, who would often leave a great burden on him. He would try to please everybody and it was a terrible strain.
I think something came over him where he felt he owed so much to Jah for allowing him to express what the people wanted to hear, that he just gave up on himself. He was saying, "I don't belong to anybody. I don't have a father on this earth. For me there is only the Father in Heaven."
Bob was very sensitive, with a lot of hurt inside him because of his past. But he grew up in that Trenchtown atmosphere where everybody is rough. Bob had to put in with a lot of resistance there. If he hadn't been so strong in himself, he wouldn't have become what he is today; he'd be downtrodden and seen as another half-caste who could never make it. So it's important he knows that there are people who care and who will strive to see that his works are established all over the world.

Life & Jah

In this excerpt from CATCH A FIRE: THE LIFE OF BOB MARLEY, Timothy White describes the unification of life and Jah for Bob Marley.

For a man like Bob Marley, life and Jah were one and the same. Marley saw Jah as being the gift of existence; that is, he believed that he, Bob Marley, was in some way eternal, and that he would never be duplicated. He believed that the singularity of every man and woman is Jah's gift. What we struggle to make of it is our sole gift to Jah. He believed the process of that struggle becomes, in time, the truth.

Historically certain figures sometimes emerge from stagnant, despairing and/or disintegrating cultures to reinterpret old symbols and beliefs and invest them with new meaning. An individual's decision to play such a role may be purely unconscious, but it can sometimes evolve into an acute awareness that he may indeed have the gift/burden of prophecy. This realization may be followed by the public declaration on the part of such a person that he is merely an instrument of a new source of knowledge, a new direction and a new order.