Bob Marley

May 11, 2011 marks the 30th anniversary of the death of the Jamaican reggae artist Bob Marley who died in 1981 from complications of cancer at the young age of 36. At that point he was a world famous singer and musician with millions of fans on all continents. 

International influence
Bob Marley is still the world’s best-known and best-selling artist not only of reggae but also from Jamaica, or perhaps even the entire Caribbean. He was also the first international superstar from a developing country. Marley’s influence in the spread of reggae’s popularity across the world cannot be overestimated. Through it he also increased the international awareness of the Rastafari movement.  

Background
Nesta Robert Marley was born in the rural community Nine Miles in the parish of St. Ann. He had a white British father and a black Jamaican mother. His father, from a relatively well-to-do family, was largely absent after Marley’s birth, and Marley grew up primarily in poverty, like many other Jamaicans. He moved later with his mother to Jamaica’s largest city Kingston and ended up in the ghetto of Trench Town in western Kingston. Here he learned to play guitar and became more and more active with music. There he also met Peter Tosh and Bunny Wailer with whom he before long formed the band the Wailers.

Wailers and musical career
During the 1960s Jamaica developed own musical genres such as ska and rocksteady. Reggae was formed around 1968.  Marley and the Wailers were active during the ska period and in 1964 they had a number one hit in Jamaica with the song Simmer Down. Marley was just 19 years old at the time. Thereafter the fame of the Wailers grew in Jamaica alongside the development of the rocksteady and reggae genres. According to the music producer Lee “Scratch” Perry, Marley distinguished himself through his strong melodies. The international popularity of the Wailers grew after the signing of a contract in 1972 with the London-based white producer Chris Blackwell’s influential Island label. Commercially, this made the music of the Wailers more accessible to an international “rock” public. Adjustments to “Western” tastes sometimes were made in the production and sometimes choice of instruments, but less in the song lyrics that for the most part remained socially critical and Rastafari-inspired.
    
Appreciation in Jamaica
Bob Marley is an official National Hero in Jamaica. His dwelling/studio in Kingston is now a museum and it is frequently visited by tourists, as is the house of his birth, now a mausoleum, in Nine Miles. Jamaicans also revere Marley generally as a cultural icon and disseminator of reggae and Rastafari. Nevertheless there remain critics. Jamaica knew and knows a rich music industry – before, during, and after Marley – with many talented artists. Therefore the one-sided association between reggae and Marley troubles some.  Racial sensitivities also occur. The fact that Marley was fairer-skinned (through his biraciality) is seen as a reason why Island put him in the spotlight and made him a big reggae star. In Jamaica historically whites and “browns” had (and still have) better positions than blacks who form the majority of about 80% and who created reggae. The biography of Marley shows however that he, in spite of his well-to-do white father, grew up in poverty.

 

 Entrance to Bob Marley Museum in uptown Kingston (source: collection KITLV, signature nr. 143313)

Statue of Bob Marley in uptown Kingston (source: collection KITLV, signature nr. 143318)

Another statue of Bob Marley in the “yard” where Marley grew up in Trench Town, a ghetto area in downtown Kingston (source: collection KITLV, signature nr. 157428)

Literature
Perhaps predictably, several biographies of Bob Marley have been published. These are, however, often from different perspectives. The KITLV collection holds several of these biographies. Other works on Marley are not so much biographical, but rather place Marley’s music and life in different, broader contexts, such as the reggae, Rastafari, Jamaican, Caribbean, postcolonial, or black consciousness contexts. Underneath is a selection of publications available at the KITLV.  

Monographies, available at the KITLV Leiden
-I & I: the natural mystics : Marley, Tosh and Wailer / Colin Grant. - London : Jonathan Cape, 2011. – 305 p. : ill. ; Met lit. opg. (Combining life stories of the Wailers: Peter Tosh, Bunny Wailer, and Bob Marley)  
-Bob Marley : the untold story / Chris Salewicz. – New York : Faber and Faber, 2010. –  420 p. : ill. ; Met lit. opg. (Originally published in 2009. This recent biography made much use of previously unavailable sources)  
-Bob Marley : a life / Garry Steckles. – Northampton, Mass. : Interlink Books, 2009. – 212 p. : ill. ; Met lit. opg. (Another recent, very readable biography)  
-Bob Marley : herald of a postcolonial world? / Jason Toynbee. – Cambridge [etc.] : Polity Press, 2006. – 263 p. ; Met lit. opg. (+ discogr. and filmogr.)  
-Trench Town reggae en las calles de Bob Marley / Hélène Lee (transl. María Oliver & Pablo Martín). – Barcelona : Oceano, 2005. – 263 p : ill. ; Met lit. opg.   -No woman, no cry : my life with Bob Marley / Rita Marley with Hettie Jones. – New York : Hyperion, 2004. –  209 p. : ill. (Biography by Bob’s wife Rita Marley)  
-Every little thing gonna be alright : the Bob Marley reader / ed. by Hank Bordowitz. – Cambridge, MA : Da Capo Press, 2004. – 314 p. : ill  
-Bob Marley : my son / Cedella Marley Booker with Anthony C. Winkler. – Lanham ; Oxford : Taylor Trade , 2003. –  250 p. : ill. (Biography by Bob’s mother Cedella Marley Booker, originally published in 1996)  
-Bob Marley : the man and his music / editors: Eleanor Wint, Carolyn Cooper. – Kingston : Arawak publications, 2003. – 124 p. ; Met lit. opg. (A selection of Papers Presented at the Conference, "Marley's Music: Reggae, Rastafari, and Jamaican Culture" Held at the University of the West Indies, Mona Campus, 5-6 February 1995)  
-What’s my name? : black vernacular intellectuals / Grant Farred. – Minneapolis, Minn ; London : University of Minnesota Press, 2003. – 316 p. ; Met lit. opg. (Studies and compares the ideas of black diaspora thinkers Muhammad Ali, C.L.R. James, Stuart Hall, and Bob Marley)  
-Bass culture : when reggae was king / Lloyd Bradley. – London : Penguin Books, 2001. –  572 p. : ill. ; Met lit. opg. (History of Jamaican reggae music, and preceding styles, chronologically covering the period from the 1950s to the present, on the basis of research, interviews, and anecdotes)  
-Catch a fire : the life of Bob Marley / Timothy White. – London [etc.] : Omnibus Press, 2000. – 552 p : ill. ; Met lit. opg. (Revised and enlarged edition of original publication in 1983. While relatively old, this biography on Marley remains according to some authoritative)  

Articles, available at the KITLV Leiden
-Remembering the fire: music tourism and the Bob Marley heritage in Jamaica / John Connell, Stanley Niaah
In: Caribbean Geography. vol. 15 (2008), issue 1, pag. 76-90; Met lit. opg  
-Bob Marley, Rastafari, and the Jamaican tourism product / Jalani Niaah, Sonjah Stanley Niaah
In: New perspectives in Caribbean tourism (New York : Routledge, 2008), pag. 44-60 : ill. ; Met lit. opg  
-Bakhtin’s dialogic model and popular music : Bob Marley and the Wailers as a case study / Bouziane Zaid
In: Culture and mass communication in the Caribbean : domination, dialogue, dispersion (Gainesville, FL : University Press of Florida, 2001), pag. 139-148 ; Met lit. opg  
-Identity and subversion in Babylon : strategies for ‘resisting against the system’ in the music of Bob Marley and the Wailers / J. Richard Middleton
In: Religion, culture, and tradition in the Caribbean (New York : St. Martin’s Press, 2000), pag. 76-90  
-Positive vibration? : capitalist textual hegemony & Bob Marley / Mike Alleyne
In: Bulletin of Eastern Caribbean Affairs. vol. 19 (1994), issue 3, pag. 69-75 ; Met lit. opg  
-‘Babylon makes the rules’: the politics of reggae crossover / Mike Alleyne
In: Social and Economic Studies. vol. 47 (1998), issue 1, pag. 65-77 (Case studies of Bob Marley, Aswad, and Steel Pulse show how conscious modification of reggae in the Euro-American market has undermined the music's aesthetic and ideological substance)    

Audiovisual material, available at the KITLV Leiden
-Reggae: the story of Jamaican music [Beeld & Geluid] / series directed and produced by Mike Connolly London : BBC Television, 2002 (ca. 140 min.) (The story of reggae, including attention to Bob Marley & the Wailers’ rise to fame)  
-Bob Marley [Beeld & Geluid] / directed and produced by Jeremy Marre Hilversum : NPS, 2001 (ca. 75 min.) (Dutch and English spoken, with Dutch subtitles. Portrait)  
-Rebel music : the Bob Marley story / directed and produced by Jeremy Marre [S.l.] : Island Def Jam Music Group, 2000 (84 min.)  
-The Wailers : Catch a fire / director: Jeremy Marre [S.l.] : Isis Production, 1991. DVD (ca. 50 min.) (English, with Dutch subtitles. On the album Catch a Fire, from 1973, with which Bob Marley & the Wailers broke through internationally)