Bob Marley and the Wailers in concert in the 1970s. Image by alamy On May 11, 1981, the world lost one of the greatest preachers it had ever seen “Preacher” is probably not the first word that most would use to describe Robert “Nesta” Marley, the Jamaican reggae singer and leader of Bob Marley & The Wailers. For me, though, listening to him had the feel of attending a revival, a call gathering all nations in the harmony of one sound. Rural Jamaica and its deep, multifaceted spirituality gave birth to Marley’s vocation as a preacher. By day, the communal rhythms of bush agriculture, stories of Africa and the Bible and the sounds of hymns governed the small village of Nine Mile, where he was born. At night, the “duppies”—spirits of the dead—swirled in the darkness. This is a world where you may be called at any time, for, as Timothy White quotes Thaddeus Livingston in his biography of Marley,