Bob Marley and American Culture Essay

I’d like to describe in this paper very interesting question of our reality. In my opinion exactly today it is necessary to pay our attention on our youth and on different genres of music that is preferred by youth. The main purpose of my work will be concentrate on Bob Marley’s activity and its influence on American culture. It is necessary to mark that over the decades the musical culture in America has changed considerably. We know that musical streams changed in different directions from psychedelic to rock n roll, from punk rock to soft rock and even from disco to heavy metal. I want to define in this paper how Bob Marley influenced American culture. We should explain this influence and prove that it was done through Marley’s music and he also influenced on American culture through other artists who impacted on society in their turn too.

First of all it is necessary to look at Bob Marley’s biography. The first disks of Marley were not successful, that quite not surprisingly: on his motherland people were not interested in music, but the West will not begin simply so to award with its attention of singer from the country of the third world. “Marley was born on Jamaica to a young black mother and an older white father. A precocious musician, a teenaged Marley formed a vocal trio in 1963 with friends Neville “Bunny” O’Riley Livingston (later Bunny Wailer) and Peter McIntosh (later Peter Tosh). The group members had grown up in Trench Town, a ghetto neighborhood of Kingston, listening to rhythm and blues on American radio stations. They heard such R&B mainstays as Ray Charles, the Drifters, Fats Domino and Curtis Mayfield. They took the name the Wailing Wailers (shortened to the Wailers) because they were ghetto sufferers who’d been born “wailing.” As practicing Rastas, they grew their hair in dreadlocks and smoked ganja (marijuana), believing it to be a sacred herb that brought enlightenment.” (White, 2006)

According to Farley we should mention that “Bob Marley was reggae’s foremost practitioner and emissary, embodying its spirit and spreading its gospel to all corners of the globe. His extraordinary body of work embraces the stylistic spectrum of modern Jamaican music – from ska to rock steady to reggae – while carrying the music to another level as a social force with universal appeal. Marley cannot claim to have had even one hit single in America, but few others changed the musical and cultural landscape as profoundly as he. As Robert Palmer wrote in a tribute to Marley upon his induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, “No one in rock and roll has left a musical legacy that matters more or one that matters in such fundamental ways.” (Farley, 2007)

Bob Marley is a cult personality on a world musical arena. It is fated not every musician to become character of fights against race discrimination, to carry to the whole world the problems of the country and all continents and, finally, to become the founder of unique musical style – which is called reggae. During half a century interest does not go out of reggae and creation of Bob Marley, people all over the world listen to reggae and remember its creator. Style of reggae, getting a powerful shove, on facilities of Bob Marley began actively to develop and presently reggae has a great number of varieties and subspecieses, hundreds of groups are created in this musical style of reggae. That yet more interestingly, reggae develops not only on Jamaica but also in many other countries of the world, including Russia.

Thus, taking into account all above mentioned we can conclude that Bob Marley greatly influenced on American culture through his activity and through his wonderful new music style. Bob Marley was a voice of the country, voice of the time, in the songs he concealed the relation and to the political system of Jamaica, and problems of all earth.

In his creation there was a place and to the wonderful romantic songs. Bob Marley forever will remain in the hearts of many people, and his creation will help in life a great deal to the generations of people. Nowadays the name of Bob Marley is not only personification of the Jamaican culture and reggae genre but also character of fight for freedom of people of not only the African origin but also all humanity, that does songs and ideas of Marley explain many things to people. Almost all Marley’s masterpieces, except lyric songs, is based on Jamaican ideological movement of Rastafarian, which implied resistance Babylon which the western capitalist and technocrat system is understood under. In the last decades these ideas had influence on a musical culture. Style of reggae is found by popularity exactly due to Bob Marley. A singer from the country of the third world is acknowledged by the European intellectual elite. In the USA creation of Marley was less popular, however and there style of reggae finds the admirers. Marley combines in the creation originality of the African culture, using here the newest technologies of Babylon at the record of the songs. He does not argue with Babylon, but also does not submit it. He is a world celebrity, but he is not part of «matrix». «I do not stand not on whose side. Neither on the side of black nor on the side of white. I am on the side of God which induces me to talk on behalf of all people, regardless of color of skin».