Bob Marley

Robert Nesta Marley was born on 6 February 1945 in Nine Miles, a rural village in Jamaica's Saint Ann Parish, to a Black Jamaican mother and a white British-Jamaican father who was largely absent from his life. Marley moved with his mother to Trenchtown, a poor, densely populated area of Kingston, in his early teens, an environment that exposed him to both hardship and the rich musical culture of Jamaican ska and rocksteady.

In Trenchtown, Marley formed a vocal trio with Peter Tosh and Bunny Wailer, initially called the Teenagers and later the Wailers. The group released their first single in 1963 and spent the following years honing a sound that blended ska, rocksteady, American soul, and the emerging genre of reggae, alongside the spiritual and cultural framework of the Rastafari movement, which Marley formally embraced in the late 1960s.

The Wailers signed with Island Records in 1972, and their 1973 album Catch a Fire became the group's international breakthrough, marketed deliberately to rock audiences alongside reggae fans. Personnel changes followed — Tosh and Wailer both left to pursue solo careers — and the group was rebranded Bob Marley and the Wailers, with Marley firmly established as its creative and public centre.

Marley's lyrics increasingly addressed poverty, resistance, spirituality, and Pan-African unity, songs like 'Get Up, Stand Up,' 'Redemption Song' and 'War' (its lyrics drawn directly from a 1963 speech by Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie) carrying explicit political and social messages to global audiences. In December 1976, two days before a planned peace concert amid escalating political violence in Jamaica, Marley was shot in an assassination attempt at his home; he survived and performed at the concert two days later regardless, an act widely seen as a statement of defiance.

His 1977 album Exodus, largely written and recorded in London during a period of self-imposed exile following the shooting, became one of the most acclaimed reggae albums ever made, later named Album of the Century by Time magazine. Marley continued touring internationally, using his growing global platform to advocate for Pan-African causes, performing at Zimbabwe's official independence ceremony in 1980 at the government's invitation.

Marley was diagnosed with a form of melanoma in 1977 but continued performing and recording as the illness progressed. He died on 11 May 1981 in Miami at the age of 36. His posthumous compilation album Legend, released in 1984, became reggae's best-selling album of all time and remains one of the best-selling albums in any genre. He was posthumously awarded Jamaica's Order of Merit and inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1994, and his music continues to serve as a global soundtrack for movements of resistance, unity and hope.