At his ten, one day, he was thinking about something, woman came there and insisted him to tell her future. He rejected her request and said, "I want to be a singer not a fortune teller."
That determined lad was Bob Marley, a revolutionary singe, musician and the lyricist. He was born on Feb. 6, 1945 in the small village of Nine Mile in Saint Ann Parish, Jamaica as Nesta Robert Marley. His father Norval Sinclair Marley was a white Scottish Jamaican. Norval was Marine officer and captain, as well as a plantation overseer and his mother, Cedella Booker, was an Afro-Jamaican. Norval provided financial support for his wife and child, but seldom saw them. In 1955, when Marley was 10 years old, his father died of a heart attack at age 60. Marley suffered racial prejudice as a youth, because of his mixed racial origins and faced questions about his own racial identity throughout his life.
Although Marley recognized his mixed ancestry, throughout his life and because of his beliefs, he self-identified as a black African. In his songs, Marley sings about the struggles of black and Africans against oppression from the West. Marley became friends with Bunny Wailer, with whom he started to play music. He left school at the age of 14 to make music with Joe Higgs, a local singer and devout Rastafari, a form of religion originated from Etheopia, whose culture was a key element in the development of reggae music. In 1962, Marley recorded his first two singles, "Judge Not" and "One Cup of Coffee". Other songs, released on the pseudonym of Bobby Martell, attracted little attention.
In 1963, Bob Marley along with other friends formed a band through which he used to arouse the sense of revolt against suppression through his songs. His songs became the means seeking justice, identity and equality among the blacks and whites. He played lots of music and sang songs which directly controlled international arena, too. In 1975, Marley had his international breakthrough with his first hit outside Jamaica, "No Woman, No Cry". But in December 1976, Marley along with his wife was wounded in an assault by unknown gunmen inside Marley's home. Bob Marley received minor wounds in the chest and arm.
Unfortunately, in July 1977, Marley was found to have aural litigious melanoma, a form of malignant amputation, because of the Rastafari belief that the body must be "whole." True to this belief Marley went against all surgical possibilities and sought out other means that would not break his religious beliefs. Slowly it changed into a vital cancer. the cancer then spread to Marley's brain, lungs, liver, and stomach. Finally, the spread of melanoma to his lungs and brain caused his death on May 11, 1981, at the age of 36 at Cedars of Lebanon Hospital in Miami, Florida.
Marley received a state funeral in Jamaica on May 21, 1981, which combined elements of Ethiopian Orthodoxy and Rastafari tradition. He was buried in a chapel near his birthplace. A month before his death, he had also been awarded the Jamaican Order of Merit. Marley was inducted into th Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1994. Time magazine chose Bob Marley & The Wailer's Exodus, the album, as the greatest album, as the greatest album of the 20th century. In 2001, Marley was posthumously awarded the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award, and a feature-length documentary about his life, Rebel Music. In 2006, the State of New York renamed a portion of Church Avenue from Remsen Avenue to East 98th Street in the East Flatbush section of Brooklyn "Bob Marley Boulevard". Anyway, a freedom fighter got a great honor and reputation from the world and, nowadays, his dream of getting equality is receiving its true sense. He is an icon and a source of inspiration to all the marginalized people of this world.
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