Draft 1

Nathalie Mendoza
Mrs. Thomas
UWRT 1101-041
26 October 2014

Bob Marley
In this essay I will be expressing four genres of Bob Marley. Bob Marley is a reggae artist; he
was a Rastafarian who expressed his spirituality throughout his music. Besides being reggae
Bob Marley was also known as a peace activist. First getting this assignment I was very
confused on how exactly to write it, and I still wasnt too sure but I put my best effort into
trying to write it correctly. I took my peers advice and made some major changes to how I
would write my final draft. I added more descriptions of each piece. Hope you enjoy it.
Bob Marley, the first major reggae artist to come out of a Third World country. He
mixed protest music and pop and popularized reggae around the world. Even after his death his
music sounds more vibrant than ever. Bob Marley was also in the band called The Wailers. I
chose to do my genre analysis on Bob Marley because I love his music and some of the views he
had towards the world.

Academic Piece: Everywhere Is War: Peace and Violence in the Life

and Songs of Bob Marley:
The academic piece I chose is written by Brent Hagerman, the whole article itself is fourteen
pages long. I read a couple of the pages and just skimmed through the rest and picked out a
couple of the important things I found out about Bob Marley. The author shows how Bob
Marley is portrayed as a revolutionary and as a peace icon. The author, Brent says how he
suggests that for Marley peace meant freedom and the presence of universal equal rights. His
legacy left behind is known as a peace promoter and a violence advocator. Brent analyzes one
Bob Marleys song War, he determines that various things can be interpreted from his song;

he advocates world peace, the need for termination of institutional violence worldwide, etc.
One paragraph is named Peaceful Icon? it says how Bob Marley is known by a message of
Peace, Love, and Unity for the world. This is one of the reasons I really like Bob Marley his
passion for peace and unity in the world! Chris Welch who interviewed Bob Marley said,
Marley always preached love and non-violence. Also Angelica Gallardo said that Marley was
and will remain a symbol of peace and freedom, in a journal Peace Review. In this article Brent
quotes a lot of his lyrics for example, One love, one heart, lets get together and feel all
right, he ties in some of the quotes very well with whatever idea he is trying to get to the
audience. Even though Marley is known to advocate for peace he does have some violence
history. In an interview he quoted saying, I expect if youre living by the gun, if the gun is the
fight, then fire gun. If where you come from, you fight with sticks and stone, then fight with
sticks and stones. Another paragraph that I found important was the one called Everywhere
is War, Marley had a song called War, Brent in this paragraph shows Marleys views of war
and peace. This song was on the top ten lists of peace songs in an article in Now. His song
War, ties in with his Rastafarian religion. Brent says how in the song he believes that Marley
is quoting his Jah, which is his God in his religion. The lyrics also speak about war thats going
on in the world and he gives examples such as racism, classism, and colonialism. When Marley
would sing about slavery he would sing it in present tense. This author used very well ethos and
logos in this piece.

Website Article: Rolling Stone: Bob Marley

Rolling Stone is a very popular magazine for music and artist so I chose to read an article
of Bob Marley on this website. The author of this article is Evan Serpick. The website itself is
set up very easy to maneuver around to see whatever you are looking to find of Bob Marley. It
has a timeline, news, pictures, reviews, covers, videos, and a bio tab. The biography tab well
very self explanatory has a summary of Marleys life. It is written into nine paragraphs.
Majority of it talks about Marleys background back in Jamaica and about his band, The
Wailers. What I thought was very neat on this website was the review tabs and the timeline.

The review one just has obviously review, but of Bob Marleys music and his albums. The
timeline has a timeline of things from videos, pictures, news on Bob Marley chronological in
order by the year. The author of this article on the website wrote everything in terms that
makes it easy for different audiences to understand what is being said.

Visual Pieces:

I also got my photographs from Rolling Stone: Bob Marley. It was under the gallery called
Bob Marley: The Stories Behind 17 Rare and Unseen Images, I chose these two because along
with the pictures that were taken by photographer Dennis Morris he explains what is going on
in the picture when he snapped them and his memories with Bob Marley at the moment. The
first one was a live shot of him on stage performing. Morris says, Thats one of my favorite
live shots of him because of the way his locks are flying and twirling, In the image you can
just see his expressions and his eyes being closed it shows me how passionate he looks while he
performs. Morris also said in the caption how he Marley could go perform in places that people
couldnt understand him but they would get a feel for his music just by his expressions. I love
just the fact that it is a live shot and his hair is motion it just gives the reader a perspective
of how he performed live. The second photograph was taken on his first tour in Bournemouth.

In the caption for this image Morris said that he was the first Jamaican who was interest in
images because he realized how powerful the meaning behind an image can be. He also says how
he believed that Marley realized that Morris could get what he wanted the image to portray.
In the image you see Bob Marley either before or after his performance smoking some
marijuana. Bob Marley smoked marijuana as he was a Rastafarian and thats what they did as a
religious sacrament. He believed that marijuana opened up his spiritual door in which allowed
him to be the artist he was.