One Love: An Exploration of the Rhetoric and Culture of Bob Marley’s Lyricism

Sky High Reggae (SHR) is a nonprofit organization dedicated to promoting multicultural community connections by ensuring access to reggae music by Bob Marley and other artists that centers on global healing. SHR helps build up reggae artists, minority business owners, other nonprofit organizations, and community members through art events, concerts, and classes, all with a focus on cultural awareness. SHR aims to “enrich lives through music” (Sky High Reggae, 2022) and also partners with local schools to provide access to art supplies to “empower youth through supporting creative expression.” While conducting research on the culture of reggae music and the life of Bob Marley, I teamed up with SHR and the Purdue University Northwest student organization the Westville Warriors to carry out a service-learning project on the cultural and societal impact of reggae music and lyricism. I wrote a Purdue service-learning grant that helped our team learn from SHR, create marketing with the organization to spread knowledge on this topic, and host community events to promote the history of ska, reggae, Rastafarian culture, and Jamaica. The project increased understanding of Bob Marley and the importance of the themes of freedom, hope, peace, unity, love, equality, and more that this music contains. Through our work, we were able to enrich lives through music, spreading unity, love, and peace reminiscent of Bob Marley’s album Catch a Fire.