The best singers of all time: Bob Marley
Anyone who only talks about Bob Marley’s singing negates what makes him one of the most important voices of our time – a voice that made history in its own right. Marley sang about serious topics, but he did so in a very tender and graceful way, with all the groove, emotion and voice at his disposal. He certainly didn’t sing correctly and wasn’t a trained singer, but he had a very beautiful voice… similar to another of the greats, Marvin Gaye. The fact that you don’t hear what they have in common is only due to their different accents and the different style of their music.
With Marley it’s hard to separate voice from content. Bob Marley sang with so much power that he could shake the foundations of his country’s government. Great singers are also judged by whether they have a message, whether they say something that would otherwise not be heard. And in a world that likes to silence people who speak of peace and love, Bob Marley managed to spread this message and inspire others to share it. It’s rare that something as serious and beautiful as his music achieves so much success. And he lent this beautiful voice to the oppressed of this world.
Since Marley scored his first hit in Jamaica in 1965 with the Wailing Wailers (which also included Peter Tosh and Bunny Wailer) – “Simmer Down” – he increasingly denounced the misery in the ghettos of his homeland and called out the inhumanity of slavery from the subconscious of the Jamaican people, he exposed the African roots of the colored Caribbean peoples. All of this has made him popular in the island world between the Bahamas and Trinidad and interesting to the West as an advocate for those people.
However, it does not explain the charismatic figure of Bob Marley, whose charisma goes far beyond that of an outstanding musician and social and historical critic. What is associated with the name Marley today in Jamaica and in many countries of western industrial civilization arose against the background of the Rastafari religion, which Marley found at the end of the 1960s and which soon became the most important source of his music and his Embassy became.
Birthday: February 6, 1945 (died: May 11, 1981). Most important songs: “No Woman, No Cry”, “Redemption Song”, “I Shot The Sheriff”. Inspiration for: Bono, Lauryn Hill, Buju Banton.