Bob Marley

Bob Marley grew up in Trenchtown, one of Kingston’s roughest neighborhoods, the mixed-race son of a white Jamaican father who was mostly absent and a Black mother who held things together. He started making music as a teenager and spent years grinding through the Jamaican ska and rocksteady scenes before reggae crystallized into something entirely new. Marley didn’t just play reggae — he was reggae. Songs like “No Woman, No Cry,” “Redemption Song,” and “Get Up, Stand Up” carried the struggles of Jamaica’s poor to the entire world. In 1976, two days before a concert meant to ease political violence in Kingston, gunmen shot him, his wife Rita, and his manager in his own home. He played the concert two days later. When asked why, he said: “The people who are trying to make this world worse are not taking a day off. How can I?” A melanoma under his toenail, initially ignored, spread through his body. He died at 36 in Miami, on his way home to Jamaica. His music is still the sound of resistance and hope for millions.