Featured In
ALBUMOne Love (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)Bob Marley & The Wailers
Albums by Bob Marley & The Wailers
ALBUMConfrontation (2013 Remaster)Bob Marley & The Wailers
ALBUMUprising (2013 Remaster)Bob Marley & The Wailers
ALBUMSurvival (2013 Remaster)Bob Marley & The Wailers
ALBUMKaya (2013 Remaster)Bob Marley & The Wailers
ALBUMExodus (2013 Remaster)Bob Marley & The Wailers
ALBUMRastaman Vibration (Deluxe Edition)Bob Marley & The Wailers
ALBUMNatty Dread (2013 Remaster)Bob Marley & The Wailers
ALBUMBurnin' (2013 Remaster)The Wailers
ALBUMCatch A Fire (Remastered 2013)Bob Marley & The Wailers
ALBUMThe Wailing WailersThe Wailers
Bob Marley & The Wailers's Popular Music Videos
African Herbsman (ADroiD & Lotus Remix)
1 World & Bob Marley & The Wailers
Redemption Song
Bob Marley & The Wailers
Is This Love
Bob Marley & The Wailers
Trenchtown Rock (Live at The Rainbow Theatre, London, 06/04/77)
Bob Marley & The Wailers
No Woman, No Cry (Live at The Rainbow Theatre, London, 06/04/77)
Bob Marley & The Wailers
Satisfy My Soul
Bob Marley & The Wailers
Easy Skanking
Bob Marley & The Wailers
War / No More Trouble (Live at The Rainbow Theatre, London, 06/04/77)
Bob Marley & The Wailers
Burnin' and Lootin' (Live at The Rainbow Theatre, London, 06/04/77)
Bob Marley & The Wailers
I Shot the Sheriff (Live at The Rainbow Theatre, London, 06/04/77)
Bob Marley & The Wailers
Artist Playlists
Bob Marley & The Wailers Essentials
Get reacquainted with the most influential reggae outfit that ever existed.
Bob Marley: Political Songs
His convictions were as strong as his musical output.
Bob Marley & The Wailers: Chill
Lean back and relax with some of their mellowest cuts.
Bob Marley & The Wailers: Sing
Grab the mic and sing along with some of their biggest hits.
Artist Biography
Given the image of him as a smiling, joint-smoking peacenik that has proliferated since his death in 1981, it’s easy to forget jut how angry Bob Marley was. His music spoke to colonialism (“Small Axe”), poverty (“Them Belly Full [But We Hungry]”), the necessity of achieving political agency (“Get Up, Stand Up”), and the challenge of exercising it (“Burnin’ and Lootin’”) with a righteousness and frustration that made him as much a figurehead to punk rock as to the reggae he helped export to the world. He may have been ambivalent about politics (he once said it was pretty much the same thing as church—a way to keep people ignorant), but it wasn’t because of their underlying possibilities; it was the way the political system had been twisted by the tyranny and greed of people in power that troubled him. And if his music sounded sweet and made you want to dance, it’s because, as his sometime publicist Vivien Goldman once put it, he knew that if he hooked you with the melody, you’d have to listen to what he had to say.
Born in 1945 in Nine Mile, a rural village about an hour and a half outside Kingston, Marley formed The Wailers with Peter Tosh and Bunny Wailer in his late teens, thickening from cheerful R&B-based ska to the more rhythmically substantive sound of reggae. As firm as his association is with Jamaica, the music he made had a dialogic relationship with a variety of Black styles, including funk (“I Shot the Sheriff,” “No More Trouble”), soul (“No Woman, No Cry,” “Redemption Song”), and even disco (“Could You Be Loved,” “Exodus”)—reggae, you could say, was just his concentration.
Even as he settled into smoother, pop-oriented sounds (1978's Kaya, 1980's Uprising), he retained an urgency and sense of struggle that inspired generations of artists to recognize that music, while great for entertainment, can also be the delivery system for something bigger.
Born in 1945 in Nine Mile, a rural village about an hour and a half outside Kingston, Marley formed The Wailers with Peter Tosh and Bunny Wailer in his late teens, thickening from cheerful R&B-based ska to the more rhythmically substantive sound of reggae. As firm as his association is with Jamaica, the music he made had a dialogic relationship with a variety of Black styles, including funk (“I Shot the Sheriff,” “No More Trouble”), soul (“No Woman, No Cry,” “Redemption Song”), and even disco (“Could You Be Loved,” “Exodus”)—reggae, you could say, was just his concentration.
Even as he settled into smoother, pop-oriented sounds (1978's Kaya, 1980's Uprising), he retained an urgency and sense of struggle that inspired generations of artists to recognize that music, while great for entertainment, can also be the delivery system for something bigger.
Hometown
Genre
Reggae