Bob Marley was far more than the first global musical superstar to emerge from the Third World. Perhaps more than any other musician, including such contenders as Dylan and Lennon, Marley escaped the confines of show business to become a cultural figure of meaning and true relevance loved by millions for far more than his music. Loved for his wisdom and philosophy. Loved for his formidable Rastafarian faith. Loved as an archetype of the creative, soulful rebel with a cause who overcomes tremendous difficulties early in life to achieve great worldly success only to have that life and success snatched away by an early death. Loved for his mystic spirit.

His revolutionary iconic aura has been compared to that of Che Guevara. Certainly, the immense esteem in which he is held throughout the Third World is potent testimony to the message of hope, resistance, liberation, justice, and joy that he preached. In West Africa in particular - and also in Jamaica, the New Mexico of the Hopis, the New Zealand of the Maoris, Indonesia, and India - some see him as the Redeemer figure, even the reincarnated Jesus Christ, come to lead the world out of its confusion. Jews, Moslems, and Christians have differing interpretations of the role of the original Jesus Christ - yet all venerate him in their various ways. Likewise, whatever the details of interpretation, Marley may indeed be readily seen as spreading a message through his music and lyrics that may yet lead the sufferers out of Babylon. If not the Messiah, he was certainly a most important prophet in the ongoing struggle for equal rights and justice.

Unlike the usual earlier versions of Christ-like figures, we are blessed by ready access to Marley's original works, the recordings of his words and music that he made over the span of almost twenty years as he progressed from his youthful struggles in the Kingston ghetto of Trenchtown to become the mature artist at the peak of his powers as he was when he succumbed to cancer in 1981 at the age of 36. You can have direct, unfiltered exposure to almost exactly the same material that lead to Marley's elevated stature and can form your own opinion based on your own personal emotional response to his voice and music without enduring the myth-making apparatus of the four Evangelists scribbling away centuries after the events they describe.

This being the saturated age of media and Marley being an immensely popular figure with significant economic impact on the fortunes of those who own the various rights to his work, Marley has, of course, been subjected to a certain amount of mythologizing. Various of his disciples have also had a good squabble, spats even, from time to time over aspects of his life. However, all the original albums that Marley recorded for Island are still available in basically unaltered state. There is also a cornucopia, a very definitely overflowing cornucopia, of various reissues, excavations of early works, reconsidered compilations, and expensive Japanese imports of live performances. Marley is frequently thought to be the most bootlegged artist ever and, unlike many bootlegs, his regularly appear in usually legitimate sales channels.

Very roughly speaking Marley's recording career falls into two parts. In the early period, pre-1972, he worked together with Neville Livingston, later known as Bunny Wailer, and Peter McIntosh, later known as Peter Tosh, in a group as The Wailing Wailers - the name was shortened to simply The Wailers somewhere around 1966. In this period, The Wailers were basically a purely Jamaican act using various backing musicians and producers.

In 1972, The Wailers signed with Island. After a couple of albums, Livingston and McIntosh left (and adopted their new names) allowing Marley to become basically a solo artist, although with the vital instrumental support of The Wailers as backing band and The I-Threes as harmony singers. Eventually he became the international figure he is remembered as. Note, however, that both periods contain significant events that divide those periods into distinct time spans, undoubtedly of artistic or cultural importance. Some observers might consider some of those events and time spans even more significant than the 1972 divide.