Bob Marley -- Celebrity Green Report
Written By Katherine Sansom
May 22, 2007
Bob Marley was only thirty-six when he died in 1981, but he is still the best known Reggae performer and his legacy has undoubtedly changed the face of music around the globe. Marley was also well known for his religious beliefs, and he brought knowledge of Rastafari into the popular imagination.
His album ‘Exodus’ stayed in the British album charts for fifty-six weeks, the compilation released three years after his death (‘Legend’) sold 12,000,000 copies – more than any other Reggae album ever made, and in 2001 he was awarded the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award.
Bob Marley is regarded as one of the greatest and most inspirational songwriters and musicians the world has ever known.
As a passionate and faithful believer in the teachings of Rastafari, Bob Marley’s music dealt with themes of love, peace, spirituality and social justice, and many of his songs lamented the environmental destruction of his homeland of Jamaica.
“You ain’t gonna miss your water/until your well runs dry./No matter how you treat him,/the man will never be satisfied”, he wrote in 1980, tracing the link between Jamaica’s poverty and the declining quality of its natural environment.
Marley was also a committed vegetarian, citing the Rastafari belief that to touch meat is to touch death.
Bob Marley’s music still inspires many activists, peace campaigners and environmentalists, and is commonly heard at rallies and protests around the world. Marc Ross, the founder of ‘Rock the Earth’ describes it as the most “inspirational” music he knows; and Jimmy Buffett, another environmentalist, covered ‘No Woman No Cry’ at the Conservation International fundraising dinner in New York in May 2005.
