Late Legendary Bob Marley, a Jamaican singer, songwriter, guitarist  and one of the pioneers of reggae is being honoured by unveiling a green plaque at Battersea Park, London by Wandsworth Council on Saturday 25^th October. Robert Nesta Bob Marley, a Rastafarian icon, who infused his music with a sense of spirituality and increased the visibility of Jamaican music worldwide, used to play football at Battersea Park while recording Exodus with the Wailers. Marley who was born in Nine Mile, Jamaica, began his career in ’63, after forming the group Teenagers with Peter Tosh and Bunny Wailer, which eventually became the Wailers and his controversial outspoken support for real democratic social reforms. His album Rastaman Vibration in ’76, became his breakthrough album in the United States, which was followed a few months by an assassination attempt at his home in Jamaica which he survived, which prompted him to permanently relocate to London, where he recorded the album Exodus which blended in elements of soul, blues and British rock. He died in May ’81, shortly after baptism into the Ethiopian Orthodox Church. 

In ’83 Buffalo Soldier a reggae song written by Bob Marley and Neol “King Sporty” Williams recorded by Jamaican band Bob Marley and the Wailers, a demo version recorded in ’78 which did not appear on record until the ’83 posthumous release of Confrontation, and became one of Marley’s best-known songs.  The lyrics “there was a Buffalo Soldier in the heart of America, Stolen from Africa, brought to America, Fighting on arrival, fighting for survival”, refer to the black US cavalry regiments known as Buffalo Soldiers, that fought in the Native American Wars after 1866, linking their fight to a fight for survival and symbolising black resistance. The Buffalo Soldiers’ duties included settling railroad disputes, building telegraph lines, repairing and building forts and helping settlers colonize lands annexed from Native Americans.

His greatest hits album Legend released in ’84 sold over 75 million records worldwide and was posthumously honoured by Jamaica the Order of Merit. In Nineteen ninety four, he was posthumously inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, as Rollin Stone ranked him No.11 on its list of 100 Greatest Artists of All Time.

Born on 6 February ’45, at the farm of his maternal grandfather in Nine Mile, Saint Ann Parish, Colony of Jamaica, to Noval Sinclair a white Jamaican and Cedella Malcolm Afro-Jamaican.