Robert Nesta Marley.

Robert "Bob" Nesta Marley OM(FEBRUARY 6, 1945- MAY 11,1981) was a Jamaican singer , songwriter , guitarist, activist. He was the frontman, lead singer, songwriter and guitarist for the Ska,rocksteady and reggae bands:The wailers (1964 – 1974) and Bob Marley & the Wailer (1974 – 1981). He is the most widely known performer of ska/reggae music, and is often credited for helping spread jamaican music to the worldwide audience.

Marley's best known hits includes "I shot the sheriff", "No Woman , no cry", "Exodus", "Could You Be Loved", "Stir It Up", "Jamming", "Redemption Song", and "One love", as well as the posthumous releases "Buffalo Soldier" och "Iron Lion Zion". The compilation album,Legend, released in 1984, three years after Marley's death, is the best-selling reggae album ever (10 times platinum), with sales of more than 12 million copies.

Member of The wailers ,
band leader of the Wailers Band,
associated with the The Upsetters,

Marley was born in the small village of Nine Mile in saint ann parish, Jamaica as Nesta Robert Marley. A Jamaican passport official would later swap his first and middle names. His father, Norval Sinclair Marley, (born in 1895), was a white Jamaican of English descent, who lived in Liverpool. Norval was a Marine officer and captain, as well as a plantation overseer, when he married cedella boooker, a black Jamaican then eighteen years old. Norval provided financial support for his wife and child, but seldom saw them, as he was often away on trips. 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 [[multiracial|mixed racial origins] and faced questions about his own racial identity throughout his life. He once reflected:

I don't have prejudice against himself. My father was a white and my mother was black. Them call me half-caste or whatever. Me don't dip on nobody's side. Me don't dip on the black man's side nor the white man's side. Me dip on God's side, the one who create me and cause me to come from black and white.

Marley and his mother moved to kingston's Trenchtown slum after Norval's death. He was forced to learn self defense, as he became the target of bullying because of his racial makeup and small stature (5'4" or 163 cm tall). He gained a reputation for his physical strength, which earned him the nickname "Tuff Gong".

Marley became friends with Neville "Bunny" Livingston (later known as Bunny wailer), with whom he started to play music. He left school at the age of 14 and started as an apprentice at a local welder's shop. In his free time, he and Livingston made music with Joe Higgs, a local singer and devout Rastafari. It was at aJam Session with Higgs and Livingston that Marley met Peter McIntosh (later known as Peter Tosh), who had similar musical ambitions.

In 1962, Marley recorded his first two singles, "Judge Not" and "One Cup of Coffee", with local music producer Leslie Kong. These songs, released on the Beverley's label under the pseudonym of Bobby Martell, attracted little attention. The songs were later re-released on the box set,songs of Freedom , a posthumous collection of Marley's work.

In 1963, Bob Marley, Bunny Livingston,Peter McIntosh, Junior Braethwaite,Beverley ,Cherry smith formed a ska and Rocksteady group, calling themselves "The Teenagers". They later changed their name to "The Wailing Rudeboys", then to "The Wailing Wailers", at which point they were discovered by record producer Coxsone Dodd, and finally to "The Wailers". By 1966, Braithwaite, Kelso, and Smith had left The Wailers, leaving the core trio of Marley, Livingston, and McIntosh.

In 1966, Marley married Rita Anderson, and moved near his mother's residence in Wilmington, Delaware in the United States for a short time, during which he worked as a Dupont lab assistant and on the assembly line at a Chrysler plant, under the alias Donald Marley. Upon returning to Jamaica, Marley became a member of the Rastafari movement, and started to wear his trademark dreadlocks.

After a conflict with Dodd, Marley and his band teamed up with Lee "Scratch " Perry and his studio band,The Upsetters. Although the alliance lasted less than a year, they recorded what many consider The Wailers' finest work. Marley and Perry split after a dispute regarding the assignment of recording rights, but they would remain friends and work together again.

Between 1968 and 1972, Bob and Rita Marley, Peter McIntosh and Bunny Livingston re-cut some old tracks with JAD Records in Kingston and London in an attempt to commercialize The Wailers' sound. Livingston later asserted that these songs "should never be released on an album … they were just demos for record companies to listen to."