History of reggae and why its so important

Reggae developed from earlier Jamaican genres including mento, ska, and rocksteady, and is rooted in traditional drumming styles such as Kumina, Pukkumina, Revival Zion, Nyabinghi, and burru.^[3] It incorporates elements of rhythm and blues, jazz, calypso, mento (a rural folk form that served as dance music and an alternative to church singing), and traditional African folk rhythms.^[4][5]

Reggae is distinguished by a slower tempo than ska or rocksteady, a strong emphasis on the downbeat in the drum and bass, and short, staccato guitar or piano chords on the offbeat.x The bass guitar plays a central role, with a thick, heavy tone and the high frequencies reduced to accentuate the low end. Call-and-response patterns are common, and the rhythm section often uses the bass as a percussion instrument, a feature carried over from rocksteady.^[6] Notable rhythm players include Jackie Jackson, Carlton Barrett, Lloyd Brevett, Paul Douglas, Lloyd Knibb, Winston Grennan, Sly Dunbar, and Anthony “Benbow” Creary.^[7]

Vocals are often delivered in Jamaican Patois, Jamaican English, or Iyaric. Lyrical themes range from political and social commentary to religion, love, and leisure activities.^[8]

Reggae is closely associated with Rastafari, an Afrocentric religion that emerged in Jamaica in the 1930s promoting pan-Africanism.^[9] From the 1970s onwards, its international success helped to spread Rastafarian beliefs, with musicians often seen as cultural messengers and agents of change.^[10]

Reggae has reached audiences worldwide, often fusing with other genres and incorporating local instruments. In Latin America, reggae en Español originated in Panama before spreading to Venezuela and across South America. In the United Kingdom, Caribbean music, including reggae, has been popular since the late 1960s, spawning several subgenres and fusions, with many reggae artists beginning their careers there. European musicians have also drawn heavily on Jamaican and Caribbean traditions. In Africa, the genre’s profile was boosted by the visit of Bob Marley to Zimbabwe in 1980.

The 1967 edition of the Dictionary of Jamaican English lists reggae as “a recently estab. sp. for rege“, as in rege-rege, a word that can mean either “rags, ragged clothing” or “a quarrel, a row”.^[11] Reggae as a musical term first appeared in print with the 1968 rocksteady hit “Do the Reggay” by the Maytals which named the genre.

Reggae historian Steve Barrow credits Clancy Eccles with altering the Jamaican patois word streggae (loose woman) into reggae.^[12] However, Toots Hibbert said:

There’s a word we used to use in Jamaica called “streggae”. If a girl is walking and the guys look at her and say “Man, she’s streggae” it means she don’t dress well, she look raggedy. The girls would say that about the men too. This one morning me and my two friends were playing and I said, “OK man, let’s do the reggay.” It was just something that came out of my mouth. So we just start singing “Do the reggay, do the reggay” and created a beat. People tell me later that we had given the sound its name. Before that people had called it blue-beat and all kind of other things. Now it’s in the Guinness World of Records.^[13]

Bob Marley said that the word reggae came from a Spanish term for “the king’s music”.^[14] The liner notes of To the King, a compilation of Christian gospel reggae, suggest that the word reggae was derived from the Latin regi meaning ‘to the king’.^[15]

Reggae’s direct origins are in the ska and rocksteady of 1960s Jamaica, strongly influenced by traditional Caribbean mento and calypso music, as well as American jazz and rhythm and blues. Ska was originally a generic title for Jamaican music recorded between 1961 and 1967 and emerged from Jamaican R&B, which was based largely on American R&B and doo-wop.^[16] Rastafari entered some countries primarily through reggae music; thus, the movement in these places is more stamped by its origins in reggae music and social milieu.^[17] The Rastafari movement was a significant influence on reggae, with Rasta drummers like Count Ossie taking part in seminal recordings.^[18] One of the predecessors of reggae drumming is the Nyabinghi rhythm, a style of ritual drumming performed as a communal meditative practice in Rastafarian culture.^[19]

In the latter half of the 20th century, phonograph records became of central importance to the Jamaican music industry, playing a significant cultural and economic role in the development of reggae music.^[20] “In the early 1950s, Jamaican entrepreneurs began issuing 78s”^[20] but this format would soon be superseded by the 7″ single, first released in 1949.^[21] In 1951 the first recordings of mento music were released as singles and showcased two styles of mento: an acoustic rural style, and a jazzy pop style.^[22] Other 7″ singles to appear in Jamaica around this time were covers of popular American R&B hits, made by Kingston sound system operators to be played at public dances.^[20] Meanwhile, Jamaican expatriates started issuing 45s on small independent labels in the United Kingdom, many mastered directly from Jamaican 45s.^[20]

Ska arose in Jamaican studios in the late 1950s, developing from this mix of American R&B, mento and calypso music.^[12] Notable for its jazz-influenced horn riffs, ska is characterized by a quarter note walking bass line, guitar and piano offbeats, and a drum pattern with cross-stick snare and bass drum on the backbeat and open hi-hat on the offbeats. When Jamaica gained independence in 1962, ska became the music of choice for young Jamaicans seeking music that was their own. Ska also became popular among mods in Britain.

In the mid-1960s, ska gave rise to rocksteady, a genre slower than ska featuring more romantic lyrics and less prominent horns.^[23] Theories abound as to why Jamaican musicians slowed the ska tempo to create rocksteady; one is that the singer Hopeton Lewis was unable to sing his hit song “Take It Easy” at a ska tempo.^[12] The name “rocksteady” was codified after the release of a single by Alton Ellis. Many rocksteady rhythms later were used as the basis of reggae recordings, whose slower tempos allowed for the “double skank” guitar strokes on the offbeat.

Reggae developed from ska and rocksteady in the late 1960s. Larry And Alvin’s “Nanny Goat” and the Beltones’ “No More Heartaches” were among the songs in the genre. The beat was distinctive from rocksteady in that it dropped any of the pretensions to the smooth, soulful sound that characterized slick American R&B, and instead was closer in kinship to US southern funk, being heavily dependent on the rhythm section to drive it along. Reggae’s great advantage was its almost limitless flexibility: from the early, jerky sound of Lee Perry’s “People Funny Boy”, to the uptown sounds of Third World’s “Now That We’ve Found Love”, it was an enormous leap through the years and styles, yet both are instantly recognizable as reggae.^[24] The shift from rocksteady to reggae was illustrated by the organ shuffle pioneered by Jamaican musicians like Jackie Mittoo and Winston Wright and featured in transitional singles “Say What You’re Saying” (1968) by Eric “Monty” Morris and “People Funny Boy” (1968) by Lee “Scratch” Perry.^{[citation needed]}

Early 1968 was when the first bona fide reggae records were released: “Nanny Goat” by Larry Marshall and “No More Heartaches” by the Beltones. That same year, the newest Jamaican sound began to spawn big-name imitators in other countries. American artist Johnny Nash‘s 1968 hit “Hold Me Tight” has been credited with first putting reggae in the American listener charts. Around the same time, reggae influences were starting to surface in rock and pop music; one example is 1968’s “Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da” by the Beatles.^[25]

The Wailers, a band started by Bob Marley, Peter Tosh and Bunny Wailer in 1963, is perhaps the most recognized band that made the transition through all three stages of early Jamaican popular music: ska, rocksteady and reggae. Over a dozen Wailers songs are based on or use a line from Jamaican mento songs. Other significant ska artists who made the leap to reggae include Prince Buster, Desmond Dekker, Ken Boothe, and Millie Small, best known for her 1964 blue-beat/ska cover version of “My Boy Lollipop” which was a smash hit internationally.^[26]

Notable Jamaican producers influential in the development of ska into rocksteady and reggae include: Coxsone Dodd, Lee “Scratch” Perry, Leslie Kong, Duke Reid, Joe Gibbs and King Tubby. Chris Blackwell, who founded Island Records in Jamaica in 1960,^[27] relocated to England in 1962, where he continued to promote Jamaican music. He formed a partnership with Lee Gopthal‘s Trojan Records in 1968, which released reggae in the UK until bought by Saga records in 1974.

Reggae’s influence bubbled to the top of the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 charts in late 1972. First Three Dog Night hit No. 1 in September with a cover of the Maytones‘ version of “Black and White“. Then Johnny Nash was at No. 1 for four weeks in November with “I Can See Clearly Now“. Paul Simon‘s single “Mother And Child Reunion” – a track which he recorded in Kingston, Jamaica with Jimmy Cliff‘s backing group – was ranked by Billboard as the No. 57 song of 1972.

In 1972, the film The Harder They Come starring Jimmy Cliff was released and introduced Jamaican music to cinema audiences outside Jamaica.^[28] Though the film achieved cult status, its limited appeal meant that it had a smaller impact than Eric Clapton‘s 1974 cover of Bob Marley’s “I Shot the Sheriff” which made it onto the playlists of mainstream rock and pop radio stations worldwide. However, the film’s hit soundtrack, which debuted in North America in February 1973, is considered to have “brought reggae to the world.”^[29] In addition, Clapton’s “I Shot the Sheriff” used modern rock production and recording techniques and faithfully retained most of the original reggae elements; it was a breakthrough pastiche devoid of any parody and played an important part in bringing the music of Bob Marley to a wider rock audience.^[12] However, the film’s hit soundtrack, which debuted in North America in February 1973, is considered to have “brought reggae to the world.”^[30] By the mid-1970s, authentic reggae dub plates and specials were getting some exposure in the UK on John Peel‘s radio show, who promoted the genre for the rest of his career.^[31] Around the same time, British filmmaker Jeremy Marre documented the Jamaican music scene in Roots Rock Reggae, capturing the heyday of Roots reggae.^[32]

While the quality of Reggae records produced in Jamaica took a turn for the worse following the oil crisis of the 1970s, reggae produced elsewhere began to flourish.^[33][20] In the late 1970s and early 1980s, the UK punk rock scene flourished, and reggae was a notable influence. The DJ Don Letts would play reggae and punk tracks at clubs such as The Roxy. Punk bands such as the Clash, the Ruts, the Members, the Police and the Slits played many reggae-influenced songs. Around the same time, reggae music took a new path in the UK; one that was created by the multiracial makeup of England’s inner cities and exemplified by groups like Steel Pulse, Aswad and UB40, as well as artists such as Smiley Culture and Carroll Thompson. The Jamaican ghetto themes in the lyrics were replaced with UK inner city themes, and Jamaican patois became intermingled with Cockney slang. In South London around this time, a new subgenre of lovers rock, was being created. Unlike the Jamaican music of the same name which was mainly dominated by male artists such as Gregory Isaacs, the South London genre was led by female singers like Thompson and Janet Kay. The UK Lovers Rock had a softer and more commercial sound. Other reggae artists who enjoyed international appeal in the early 1980s include Third World, Black Uhuru and Sugar Minott. The Grammy Awards introduced the Grammy Award for Best Reggae Album category in 1985.

Women also play a role in the reggae music industry personnel such as Olivia Grange, president of Specs-Shang Musik; Trish Farrell, president of Island/Jamaica; Lisa Cortes, president of Loose Cannon; Jamaican-American Sharon Gordon, who has worked in the independent reggae music industry.^[34]

Jamaican Prime Minister Bruce Golding made February 2008 the first annual Reggae Month in Jamaica. To celebrate, the Recording Industry Association of Jamaica (RIAJam) held its first Reggae Academy Awards on 24 February 2008. In addition, Reggae Month included a six-day Global Reggae conference, a reggae film festival, two radio station award functions, and a concert tribute to the late Dennis Brown, who Bob Marley cited as his favorite singer. On the business side, RIAJam held events focused on reggae’s employment opportunities and potential international revenue. .^[35] Reggae Month 2019 in Jamaica was welcomed with multiple events ranging from corporate reggae functions to major celebrations in honour of Bob Marley’s Birthday on 6 February to a tribute concert in honour of Dennis Brown on 24 February along with a sold-out concert by 2019 Reggae Grammy nominated artiste Protoje for his A Matter of Time Live held at Hope Gardens in Kingston on 23 February.

In November 2018 “reggae music of Jamaica” was added to the UNESCO‘s Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity the decision recognised reggae’s “contribution to international discourse on issues of injustice, resistance, love and humanity underscores the dynamics of the element as being at once cerebral, socio-political, sensual and spiritual