The story
Reggae emerged in Kingston, Jamaica, in 1968, when producers and bands slowed the beat of rocksteady and put more weight on the bass and the off-beat guitar chop. The name is usually traced to the single Do the Reggay by Toots and the Maytals, though the origin of the word is debated. Lyrics often spoke about poverty, injustice and faith, in Jamaican speech, and the Rastafari movement, with its devotion to Ethiopia's Haile Selassie, supplied much of its vocabulary and mood.
Jamaica won independence from Britain in 1962, and its music developed quickly. Kingston's sound systems, giant mobile speaker rigs run by men such as Duke Reid and Coxsone Dodd, played American rhythm and blues from the radio, which inspired local ska around 1960; producers then made their own records for the systems. Reggae reached a world audience through the film The Harder They Come (1972) and Bob Marley and the Wailers, whose album Catch a Fire (1973) came out on Island Records. Marley, reggae's first global star, died of cancer in 1981 at 36. Jamaican dub techniques, which stripped tracks down and added echo, later fed into hip hop and electronic dance music.
Why it mattered
- Reggae made Jamaica a major force in global pop culture and spread Rastafari imagery and ideas of Pan-African pride.
- Dub and the sound system tradition influenced hip hop, which grew in New York in the 1970s partly through Jamaican immigrants such as DJ Kool Herc.
- Reggae-inspired genres such as dancehall and ska revival developed in Britain and the Caribbean, and later fed pop and electronic music.
Sources
- Reggae Britannica
- Reggae music of Jamaica UNESCO
- Toots and the Maytals Britannica
- Reggae star Bob Marley dies at 36 History.com
- Hip-hop's Caribbean roots TIME
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