Bob Marley Trivia
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57 free Bob Marley trivia questions with answers — music quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Robert Nesta Marley was born in a Jamaican hill village to a teenage mother and a white father he barely knew, moved to a Kingston slum at 12, and by 36 was the first global superstar to come out of the developing world. This quiz covers the whole arc: the Wailing Wailers and their first Jamaican number one, the spell working on a Delaware assembly line, Chris Blackwell and Island Records, the albums from Catch a Fire to Uprising, the songs Eric Clapton and Jimmy Cliff covered, and the compilation that has sat on the Billboard chart for more than 900 weeks. It also covers the man: his conversion to Rastafari and his last-minute baptism, the assassination attempt before Smile Jamaica, the moment he joined the hands of Manley and Seaga on stage, the melanoma under his toenail, his football obsession, his eleven acknowledged children and the mausoleum at Nine Mile. Questions run from easy (which country he came from) to expert (the name he was baptised under). Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on Marley, his albums, his songs and the people around him, and each question shows the sentence that supports it. Try our reggae, Jamaica and 1970s music quizzes next.
30 of 57 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01What was Bob Marley's middle name?
Nesta
Nesta. By an often-told account it came first on his birth papers, until a passport official swapped his two names around because Nesta sounded like a girl's name.
Q 02Which Grammy-winning singer had five children with Bob Marley's son Rohan?
Lauryn Hill
Lauryn Hill. Her song 'To Zion' is about choosing to have their first child, and in 1999 she turned Bob Marley's 'Turn Your Lights Down Low' into a posthumous duet with him.
Q 03At age 12 Marley moved with his mother to which Kingston neighbourhood?
Trenchtown
Trenchtown. Its crowded government yards, each shared by several families, raised so many ska and reggae singers that the district is known as the birthplace of reggae.
Q 04Which Bob Marley song did Ajax supporters adopt as their anthem after hearing it at a 2008 friendly in Cardiff?
Three Little Birds
Three Little Birds. The stadium played it during the trip to Cardiff, the travelling Dutch fans sang along, and it has been the club's unofficial anthem ever since.
Q 05Which Studio One founder discovered the Wailing Wailers and produced their earliest hits?
Coxsone Dodd
Coxsone Dodd was a sound-system operator turned producer; the Wailers later walked out on his label in a dispute over how little they were paid.
Q 06The Wailers' first Jamaican number one, in early 1964, was which song?
Simmer Down
Simmer Down was Marley's warning to Kingston's hot-tempered ghetto youths to cool off; the ska single was an overnight smash that made the Wailers stars at home.
Q 07The Wailers' 1965 debut album included 'One Love', a reworking of which Curtis Mayfield song?
People Get Ready
People Get Ready was a hit for Curtis Mayfield's group the Impressions, the American vocal act the young Wailers modelled their own harmonies on.
Q 08After marrying Rita in 1966, Marley briefly moved to which US state, working at DuPont?
Delaware
Delaware was where his mother had settled, in Wilmington; he worked there as a lab assistant and on a Chrysler assembly line under the alias Donald Marley.
Q 09As a Rastafarian, Marley regarded which ruler as an incarnation of God, or Jah?
Haile Selassie I of Ethiopia
Haile Selassie I of Ethiopia was known as Ras Tafari before his 1930 coronation, which is where the faith gets its name, yet he never regarded himself as God or followed Rastafari.
Q 10Which record label boss signed the Wailers in 1972 and moulded their sound for a rock audience?
Chris Blackwell
Chris Blackwell, founder of Island Records, met the Wailers when they were stranded in London in 1972 and advanced them £4,000 to go home and record an album.
Q 11The Wailers' first Island album, released in April 1973, was called what?
Catch a Fire
Catch a Fire was treated like a rock album, not a batch of singles: after the Kingston sessions, the tapes were reworked in London with overdubs aimed at rock listeners.
Q 12Eric Clapton's first US number one, in the mid-1970s, was a cover of which Wailers song from Burnin'?
I Shot the Sheriff
I Shot the Sheriff became Clapton's only US number one, and the cover's success sharply raised Marley's own profile abroad.
Q 13Marley's first hit outside Jamaica, in 1975, was a live version of which song?
No Woman, No Cry
Q 21Which 1977 album did Time magazine name its Album of the Century?
Exodus
Exodus won Time's 1999 title because, the magazine said, it drew inspiration from the Third World and then gave voice to it the world over.
Q 22A future supermodel appeared as a child in the 1978 video for 'Is This Love'. Who?
Naomi Campbell
The video was shot at the Keskidee centre, a Black-led arts venue in London; the single reached number 9 in the UK.
Q 23At the 1978 One Love Peace Concert, Marley joined the hands of Michael Manley and which opposition leader?
Edward Seaga
Edward Seaga led the Jamaica Labour Party, whose feud with Manley's party had Jamaica near civil war; he went on to become prime minister himself in 1980.
No Woman, No Cry began as a studio album track; the take recorded at London's Lyceum Theatre became the single that carried Marley beyond reggae circles to a mainstream audience.
Q 14Which old friend of Marley's holds the official songwriting credit for 'No Woman, No Cry'?
Vincent Ford
Vincent Ford is the credited writer, though many believe Marley wrote the song himself and gave away the credit so that the royalties would support his friend.
Q 15When the original Wailers split, which female vocal group including Rita Marley took over the harmonies?
The I Threes
The I Threes were Rita Marley, Judy Mowatt and Marcia Griffiths; Griffiths went on to record 'Electric Boogie', the song the Electric Slide line dance is done to.
Q 16Which album was Marley's first after his two co-founders quit?
Natty Dread
Natty Dread was the first album without his two co-founders, one of whom had refused to go on touring abroad for the label.
Q 17The Island Records boss gave Marley his Kingston house at what address, later the Bob Marley Museum?
56 Hope Road
56 Hope Road, once the label's Island House headquarters, became his home and rehearsal base; gunmen attacked him there during a band rehearsal in 1976.
Q 18Which 1976 album was Marley's first to reach the top 10 of the Billboard 200?
Rastaman Vibration
Rastaman Vibration reached number eight in the US; several of its songs are credited to Marley's friends and family, which many believe was his way round a dispute with his old publisher.
Q 19Marley was shot at home on 3 December 1976, two days before which free concert?
Smile Jamaica
Smile Jamaica went ahead with a wounded Marley on stage, singing for a reported 80,000 people while some of his band were still in hiding.
Q 20After the 1976 attempt on his life, Marley went into self-imposed exile, settling in which country?
England
England became his base after a short stay in the Bahamas: he lived in London for more than a year and recorded two albums there before going home.
Q 24In 1978 Marley was awarded the Peace Medal of the Third World by which international body?
The United Nations
The United Nations medal came from its African delegations, weeks after he returned from exile to headline a concert meant to calm Jamaica's political violence.
Q 25In April 1980 Marley was invited to perform at the independence celebrations of which African country?
Zimbabwe
Zimbabwe was already the title of a song he had released the year before in support of the independence struggle, and its inspiration to the fighters earned him the invitation.
Q 26Marley's final studio album released in his lifetime, in 1980, was called what?
Uprising
Uprising was meant to be toured across the United States, but Marley managed only a handful of American shows before illness ended his performing career.
Q 27Unusually for a Marley track, 'Redemption Song' is recorded how?
Solo, on acoustic guitar
Solo, on acoustic guitar, with no band at all: that bare, folk-like sound has since drawn covers from singers as different as Joe Strummer and Rihanna.
Q 28Lines in 'Redemption Song' derive from a speech by which Pan-Africanist orator?
Marcus Garvey
Marcus Garvey told a Nova Scotia audience in 1937 that only they could free their own minds; Marley reworked the line into the song's best-known words.
Q 29The hit 'Buffalo Soldier' was first released on which posthumous 1983 album?
Confrontation
Confrontation was pieced together two years after his death from unreleased recordings; 'Buffalo Soldier', left unreleased in his lifetime, became a hit he never lived to hear.
Q 30Marley's song 'Buffalo Soldier' is named after which fighters?
Black US cavalry regiments
Black US cavalry regiments raised after the Civil War were known as Buffalo Soldiers; Marley used them to tell the story of Africans taken in the slave trade and made to fight in America.