NEW YORK: The cannabis-smoking Bob Marley, the leading prophet of the Rastafarian religion who died 25 years ago on May 11, remains an enduring symbol of reggae, a Caribbean style of music that emphasises social and political grievances with mesmerising melodies.

Among Hopi Indians, Bob Marley fulfiled a centuries-old prophecy. The Nepalese consider him the incarnation of the Hindu god Vishnu and Australian Aboriginals honour the reggae legend as a prophet for peace and the rights of the oppressed.

Marley lifted his voice fiercely and poetically against the suffering in the slums of Kingston, Jamaica, and the arrogant attitude of the white upper class.

“Until the philosophy which holds one race superior and another inferior is finally and permanently discredited and abandoned, everywhere is war, me say war,” Marley sang in the song War.

Marley accurately predicted his music would live on after his untimely death in a Miami hospital at age 36, when cancer had spread from a spot of melanoma on his foot to his brain. After introducing Jamaican music to the world, Marley became the first musician of that country to achieve international stardom. No other reggae musician has reached his level of fame.

Robert Nesta Marley was born February 6, 1945, in Rhoden Hall Jamaica, to a black Jamaican mother and a white British navy officer father who largely disappeared from Marley and his mother’s life. At age 14, Marley left his village to work in Kingston as a welder. In 1964, he founded the group that eventually was called the Wailers with Peter Tosh.

 For 10 years his fame was limited to the Caribbean island. In the ‘60s, helped Marley achieve international recognition with his chart-topping cover version of Marley’s song, “I Shot the Sheriff”. In 1974, Marley released his breakthrough album Natty Dread, an immediate hit among European Bohemians and hippies  in New York City’s Greenwich Village. It included the song “No Woman, No Cry.”

By the mid ‘70s Marley was so revered in Jamaica that his influence as a poet and prophet became a political threat. In December 1976, he was wounded in an attack at his home in Kingston. He left Jamaica for more than a year, releasing his biggest album to date – Exodus in 1977. By 1980, Marley’s health  forced him to withdraw from the spotlight.  He died from cancer on 11 May 1981.