Bob Marley was born in the village of Nine Mile, in Saint Ann Parish, Jamaica, as Nesta Robert Marley.[7] A Jamaican passport official would later reverse his first and middle names.[8][9] He attended Stepney Primary and Junior High School which serves the catchment area of Saint Ann.[10][11]
Norval Marley
His father, Norval Sinclair Marley, was an Anglo-Jamaican,[12] whose family came from Engl
and. Norval claimed to have been a captain in the Royal Marines.[13] He was a plantation overseer when he married Cedella Booker, an Afro-Jamaican then 18 years old.[14] Norval provided financial support for his wife and child, but seldom saw them, as he was often away on trips. In 1955, when Bob Marley was 10 years old, his father died of a heart attack at age 70.[15] Marley faced questions about his own racial identity throughout his life. He once reflected:
I don't have prejudice against meself. Them call me half-caste or whatever. Me don't deh pon nobody's side. Me don't deh pon the black man's side nor the white man's side. Me deh pon God's side, the one who create me and cause me to come from black and white.[16]
The Bob Marley House in Nine Mile is a home that he shared with his mother during his youth
Although Marley recognised his mixed ancestry, throughout his life and because of his beliefs, he self-identified himself as a Jamaican of African descent, following the ideas of Pan-African leaders.[citation needed] Marley stated that his two biggest influences were Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie I and Marcus Garvey. A central theme in Bob Marley's message was the repatriation to Zion of those of African descent that had been dispersed around the world by the practice of slavery.[17] In songs such as "Survival", "Babylon System", and "Blackman Redemption", Marley sings about the struggles of Africans against oppression from the West or "Babylon".[18]
Marley met Neville Livingston (later known as Bunny Wailer) in Nine Mile. Bob's mother and Bunny's father together had a daughter, who was a younger sister to both Bob and Bunny. Marley and Livingston had something in common: they had both started to play music together while Marley was still at elementary school. Marley left Nine Mile with his mother when he was 12 and moved to Trench Town, Kingston. While in Trench Town, he met up with Livingston again and they formed a musical collaboration with Joe Higgs, a local singer and devout Rastafari. At a jam session with Higgs and Livingston, Marley met Peter McIntosh (later known as Peter Tosh), who had similar musical ambitions.[19] In 1962, Marley recorded his first two singles, "Judge Not" and "One Cup of Coffee", with local music producer Leslie Kong. These songs, released on the Beverley's label under the pseudonym of Bobby Martell,[20] attracted little attention. The songs were later re-released on the box set Songs of Freedom, a posthumous collection of Marley's work.
