ABSTRACT
This chapter addresses Bob Marley’s rise to fame and his crowning within the American and British music press as the “new king of rock.” Marley, and his group the Wailers, were pivotal in bringing reggae to a larger international audience. From the very beginning, Marley was destined for fame; destined to become the chosen one. For it is a unique set of experiences and circumstances that have shaped Marley’s music, the son of an Afro-Jamaican woman and an Englishman. His experiences are rooted within the sufferers of Jamaica. He celebrated the rudi ‘rebellion’ of the 60’s and defended ‘rudi’ in tunes like, ‘Let Them Go’. Living in America for a while, Marley was very much influenced by American rhythm and blues and soul music. His persecution by babylon lent a new style of rhetoric to his lyricism; this was the rhetoric not of protest but of defiance and rebellion.
