Given the image of him as a smiling, joint-smoking peacenik that has proliferated since his death in 1981, it’s easy to forget just how angry Bob Marley was. His music spoke to colonialism (“War”), poverty (“Concrete Jungle”), the necessity of achieving political agency (“Get Up, Stand Up”), and the challenge of exercising it (“Burnin’ and Lootin’”) with a righteousness and frustration that made him as much a figurehead to punk rock as to the reggae he helped export to the world. Marley formed The Wailers with Peter Tosh and Bunny Wailer in his late teens, thickening from cheerful R&B-based ska to the more rhythmically substantive sound of reggae. His music had a dialogic relationship with a variety of Black styles beyond reggae, including funk (“I Shot the Sheriff"), soul (“No Woman, No Cry,” “Redemption Song”), and even disco (“Could You Be Loved,” “Exodus”). Even as he settled into smoother, pop-oriented sounds, he retained an urgency and sense of struggle that inspired generations of artists to recognize that music, while great for entertainment, can also be the delivery system for something bigger.