Bob Marley consists of Robert Nesta.
For the comedian see Bob Marley (comedian)
Robert Nesta Marley, OM, ( February 6, 1945 – May 11, 1981) better known as Bob Marley, was a Jamaican singer, guitarist, songwriter, Rastafarian and activist. He is the most widely known writer and performer of Reggae music, famous for popularising the genre outside of Jamaica. Much of his music dealt with the struggles of the impoverished and/or powerless. Bob Marley is also renowned for the way in which he spread faith through his music.
Bob Marley was born in Nine Miles, Saint Ann, Jamaica. His father, Norval Marley, was born in Jamaica in 1895 to a family originally from Sussex, England. He was a soldier before becoming a plantation overseer, the job he held when he married Bob Marley's mother, Cedella Booker, an eighteen-year-old black girl. Norval Marley's affluent English family disapproved of mixed race relationships and although Norval provided financial support, he seldom saw his son. Marley faced questions about his own racial idenity throughout his life with a white father and a black mother, especially when Jamaica was experiencing racial tension in the mid-1900s. He reflects, "I don't have prejudice against myself. 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."
Bob Marley was raised by his mother, who moved them to Kingston's Trenchtown slum in the mid-1950s. He became friends with Neville "Bunny" Livingston (aka Bunny Wailer) with whom Marley started to play music. Marley left school at the age of 14 and started as an apprentice at a local welder's shop, while spending his free time with Bunny Livingston, making music. Joe Higgs, a local singer and devout Rastafarian, was key to Bob Marley's success. Many critics realize him as the true mentor of Bob Marley. It was at one of the sessions with Higgs that Marley and Livingston met Peter Tosh (then known as Peter McIntosh) who also had musical ambitions.