The Life and Music of Bob Marley - Assignment Example

The Life and Music of Bob Marley Robert Nesta Marley and Tuff Gong are the other s of this legendary singer, song and guitarist of the Reggae genre of music. His active years in music were from 1962 to 1981. Bob Marley was born on 6 February 1945 and died on 11 May 1981. Bob Marley hailed from Jamaica. When it comes to Reggae music, Bob Marley is considered as one of the most famous singers coming under its folds. Some of his followers claim that he is indeed the prophet of the religion since he was a devoted Rastafarian. Bob Marley’s parents came from the Sussex. His father was a Marine officer and captain. He also looked at the plantation sights since he was an overseer. He married a black Jamaican and accounted for the financial support of his wife and kid. The irony was that he hardly got to see them since he was away on trips. Bob Marley was merely 10 years old when his dad expired due to a heart attack. He was 60 years of age then. Due to Bob’s mixed racial origins, he was a victim of racial disharmony and the prejudice that he suffered was immense by his standards. He often had to face questions regarding his racial identity as his father was white and mother, black. Moving on with his life, Bob Marley learned self defense. This was because he was the victim of bullying as his racial make up was mixed and he had small stature. However on the flip side he gained recognition for having overbearing physical strength and that was the time that he attained the nickname of “Tuff Gong”. By this time, he became friends with Bunny Wailer, who was also his partner when they started to play music. By the time he was 14 years old, he left school and started to work as an apprentice at a welder’s shop in the local community. In his leisure time, he played music alongside Wailer and Joe Higgs – the latter being a local singer as well as a devoted Rastafari, much like Bob Marley himself. It is a fact that many people are of the belief that Joe Higgs was an early mentor of Bob Marley and Bob gathered a lot of inspiration from Higgs. During jam sessions with Higgs and Wailer he met Peter Tosh who had ambitions similar to Bob Marley and this made them the best of friends. It was in the year 1962 that his musical career kicked off. He recorded his initial two songs – Judge Not and One Cup of Coffee with a producer, Leslie Kong. These songs had little value in terms of attraction when they were released under the Beverley’s label. However with the passage of some time, these two songs were re-released on the album Songs of Freedom which was a posthumous collection of Bob Marley’s singles. The next year – 1963 saw Bob Marley, Wailer, Peter Tosh, Junior Braithwaite, Beverley Kelso and Cherry Smith forming a ska and rocksteady group. They called themselves The Teenagers which was later on changed into The Wailing Rudeboys which again got changed to The Wailing Wailers and finally settling into The Wailers. In three years’ time, Junior Braithwaite, Beverley Kelso and Cheery Smith left the group and thus the group was left on the shoulders of the trio - Bob Marley, Wailer and Peter Tosh. Bob Marley was a singer, leader and a songwriter for The Wailers. Their first single was Simmer Down was produced by Coxsone Dodd at the Studio One. This track went up ahead in the Jamaican Charts in the year 1964 and thus formed the basis for establishing The Wailers as the hottest bands in the country. Also they came up with songs like 400 Years and Soul Rebel later on in their musical undertakings. When he came back to Jamaica, Bob Marley became an active member of the Rastafari movement and thus started to wear his trademark dreadlocks which represented his tilt for the movement in essence. This followed up with a fight with Coxsone Dodd and thus there was a breakup which resulted in Bob Marley grouping up with Lee Scratch Perry and his band, based in a studio known as The Upsetters. This group did not last more than a year but what the band as a whole recorded during this while in terms of music was something that Bob Marley considered as the finest work that he had done thus far. Lee Scratch Perry and Bob Marley had a dispute and thus parted ways, but agreed to remain friends and work together in the coming times. Between the years 1968 and 1972, Bob Marley along with his wife and other band members tried his best to commercialize the music that was being produced under the banner of The Wailers. Their first album Catch A Fire was released in 1973 worldwide and had a good response. It was in the year 1974 that The Wailers broke up as the three main members to go solo and continue with their respective music careers. There are different views as to why it broke up in the first place. Some opine that all of them had disagreements in terms of performances while there are people who claim that Wailer and Peter Tosh always wanted to be solo musicians than anything else. This breakup did not have any such effect on Bob Marley who kept on recording as Bob Marley & The Wailers. He included a couple of guys, Carlton and Aston – both being brothers on drums and bass respectively. He further added a number of other musicians to take up the keyboards, lead guitar, percussion and his wife along with her friends provided backing vocals. It was in the year 1975 that Bob Marley attained international acclaim when his single No Woman, No Cry became an instant hit. This was from his album Natty Dread. After this, his album Rastaman Vibration, which was released in the year 1976 also found acclaim from all and sundry as it spent four consecutive weeks on the Billboard Charts Top Ten. Moving ahead, Bob Marley performed at a number of different political concerts time and again which were undertaken to ease off tension in different parts of Jamaica and elsewhere. He performed at the One Love Peace Concert in Jamaica in the year 1978 which was an attempt to keep away the tensions that had erupted in Jamaica by that time. His other albums which got released in 1979 were Survival, which aimed at getting a jibe on the politics of the time. In the year 1980 he released Uprising, which marked as Bob Marley’s final studio album and is considered as his most famous works done till that time. This album included the hits Redemption Song and Forever Loving Jah. Confrontation was released in the year 1983 after his death. This included his unreleased songs during his life time. It is planned that in the year 2008 there would be incorporation of Bob Marley and The Wailer’s music in the film which is a movie adaptation of Irvine Welsh’s novel – a best seller by all counts, Ecstasy: Three Tales of Chemical Romance. Bob Marley was diagnosed with cancer in the year 1977. He declined the offer of amputation as he feared that an operation would affect the way he danced on stage. This was also due to the belief coming from the Rastafari school of thought that the body must be a whole at all times. “Rasta no abide amputation. I dont allow a man to be dismantled.” (From the biography Catch a Fire) Bibliography Hebdige, Dick. (1990). Cut n Mix: Culture, Identity, and Caribbean Music. Routledge Gibson, Chris. (2002). Sound Tracks: Popular Music, Identity, and Place. Routledge Lockard, Craig A. (1998). Dance of Life: Popular Music and Politics in Southeast Asia. University of Hawaii Press Barrett Sr., Leonard E. (1997). The Rastafarians. Beacon Press Alleyne, Mike. (2000). White Reggae: Cultural Dilution in the Record Industry. Popular Music and Society, Vol. 24 Word Count: 1,280 Read More