Timothy White

His celebration of his Jah-given uniqueness was a joyful noise that all of humanity could love.

It might surprise some to see Bob Marley's output described as rock & roll. Indeed, there is a tendency to view rock & roll as African in its ultimate origins but American or European in its prime exposition, with scant notice of modern musical kinships from the lower half of the hemisphere.

Yet Bob Marley was raised on rock's full heritage of social forces and stylistic influences, just as surely as he handed them back in marvelously reinvented form.