Bob Marley Life And Contributions To The

Bob Marley: Life And Contributions To The World Essay, Research Paper

The form of music known as reggae was not always as popular as it has been in recent decades. Society in the 1960’s and 70’s had problems with racism and equality causing many people to turn to music as an escape. In Catch a Fire, by Timothy White, the author tells all about the life of Bob Marley, his contributions to the music industry and to culture. Bob Marley lived though harsh times, but grew up to become one of the greatest reggae musicians of all time. His music was heavily influenced by religious and social issues. In creating his unique music, he became an icon to future musicians around the world. Today his music continues to influence many musicians, fans, and cultures.

In 1944 a fifty year old British military man named, Captain Norval Marley, married an eighteen year old black Jamaican girl named Cadella Booker. They had a son naming him Robert Nesta Marley, later known as Bob, who was born on February 6, 1947 in Nine Miles, Jamaica (Lee 1). Captain Marley seldom saw his son, although he provided some financial support for the family. When Bob was five years old, his father took Bob away to Kingston, Jamaica’s capital. On the journey there, “Bob thought of Nine Miles once the most imposing community he could envision, now reduced to a village in a coffee cup when compared to what was sprawled out before him” (White 80). He was reunited with his mother about a year later. Bob and his mother lived in one of the most dangerous slums of Kingston. Later, these living conditions would inspire Marley to write a song, called “Concrete Jungle”, which likened the living conditions and poverty in the slum to the shackles of slavery. This was only one of his many songs written about freedom from oppression.

While Bob lived in the shanty part of Kingston, he met a boy his age, Bunny Livingstone. Bunny, also a native of Kingston, established a close relationship with Bob (Nicholas 23). They sang together everyday after school and made their own instruments. With their adolescent voices, Bob and Bunny began in 1960 to build, what one day became the Wailer’s music. In Kingston, musicians were developing a new sound, consisting of a unique mixture of mento (a kind of calypso) and rhythm and blues, which would later be called Jamaican Ska. Bob and Bunny were fascinated with America’s rhythm and blues singers such as Fats Domino, and Louis Jordan. Most of all, the “Drifters”, and particularly the “Impressions” had a significant impact on them. Like many other Jamaican teenagers, Bob found music a relief from the realities of ghetto life. By spending most of his time writing and practicing songs with Bunny, he attempted to escape the violent and inequitable world of Kingston (Lee 2). All Kingston youths were looking for a way out of the endless cycle of poverty. Crime was a solution for some, known as rudies, but on the violent Kingston streets it almost certainly ended in their early death.

When Bob attended school, he dreamed of music. However, schoolwork prepared him for unattainable goals, which would only result in empty solutions. The life he was destined for in Trench Town had nothing to do with math and science. By the time he was fifteen, he had quit school, and had become a welder’s apprentice. He felt this way he could at least bring some money into the household, but he still dreamed of becoming a musician. However, no one took him too seriously, because at that time everyone wanted to become a recording star.

The people Bob grew up with in the Kingston slums were drawn towards Joe Higgs, a popular musician. Higgs like many Kingston residents, was a member of a religious cult known as Rastafarianism (Nicholas 49). This cult would later influence Bunny and then Bob and their music. Soon Bob would realize that he could not make any progress with his music without the help of someone else. He needed someone who could teach him techniques, like how to project his voice and to hold harmony. Higgs held free music clinics at his home in the ghetto, only one street away from Bob’s home. So Bob and Bunny decided to attend his classes, and went just about every day. From a harsh life of poverty, Bob had managed to escape the violent Kingston world and began developing his first musical pieces.

As his musical abilities developed, Marley was desperate to make his first album at the young age of 16. Little did he know that his recording career would lead him on a spiritual journey and make him the Third World’s first international superstar. In 1962, Bob Marley released his first album “Judge Not” with Bunny and another friend Peter Tosh. That year, after Bob released that album, he formed the legendary Wailing Wailers. They consisted of Bunny Livingstone, Peter Tosh, Joey Brathwaite and Bob Marley himself. The group was named “the Wailers” because, as Bob explained, “in those days we were always crying.”(Okoampa-Ahoofe Jr. 18).

On February 10, 1966, Bob Marley married a woman named Rita Anderson. The next day, Bob was on a plane to visit his mother in Delaware after she had written him several times asking him to come visit her in the United States. Although she wanted him to settle there, he was anxious to get back to the Wailers in Jamaica. So he worked in America just enough to be able to finance his music, and then he returned to Jamaica seven months later.