Reggae () is a music genre that originated in Jamaica in the late 1960s. The term also refers to the modern popular music of Jamaica and its diaspora.Stephen Davis. "Reggae." Grove Music Online. Oxford University Press. Retrieved 16 February 2016. The 1968 single by Toots and the Maytals titled "Do the Reggay" was the first popular song to use the word reggae, effectively naming the genre and introducing it to a global audience. Origins and influences 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. It incorporates elements of rhythm and blues, jazz, mento (a rural folk form that served as dance music and an alternative to church singing, which was conflated with calypso by the 1950s), and traditional African folk rhythms.Anderson, Rick. "Reggae Music: A History and Selective Discography". Notes 61.1 (2004): 206–214.
Musical characteristics 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. 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.Wilton, Peter. "reggae." The Oxford Companion to Music. Ed. Alison Latham. Oxford University Press. Retrieved 16 February 2016. Notable rhythm players include Jackie Jackson, Carlton Barrett, Lloyd Brevett, Paul Douglas, Lloyd Knibb, Winston Grennan, Sly Dunbar, and Anthony "Benbow" Creary.
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.
Cultural connections Reggae is closely associated with Rastafari, an Afrocentric religion that emerged in Jamaica in the 1930s promoting pan-Africanism. From the 1970s onwards, its international success helped to spread Rastafarian beliefs, with musicians often seen as cultural messengers and agents of change.
Global spread 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.
Etymology 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".1967, Dictionary of Jamaican English, 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. 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.Sturges, Fiona (2004) "Frederick "Toots" Hibbert: The reggae king of Kingston ", The Independent, 4 June 2004, retrieved 11 December 2009; cf. many similar statements by Hibbert in recent years. In earlier interviews, Hibbert used to claim the derivation was from English 'regular', in reference to the beat.
Bob Marley said that the word reggae came from a Spanish term for "the king's music". The liner notes of To the King, a compilation of Christian gospel reggae, suggest that the word reggae was derived from the Latin meaning 'to the king'.
History
Precursors
Reggae's direct origins are in the ska and rocksteady of 1960s Jamaica, strongly influenced by traditional mento (often referred to as calypso music due to conflation), 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."Ska." Encyclopedia of Popular Music, 4th ed. Ed. Colin Larkin. Oxford Music Online. Oxford University Press. Web. 16 February 2016. 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.Salter, Richard C.. "Sources and Chronology in Rastafari Origins". Nova Religio: The Journal of Alternative and Emergent Religions 9.1 (2005): 5–31. The Rastafari movement was a significant influence on reggae, with Rasta drummers like Count Ossie taking part in seminal recordings. 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.
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. "In the early 1950s, Jamaican entrepreneurs began issuing 78s" but this format would soon be superseded by the 7" single, first released in 1949. 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.Garnice, Michael. "Bob Marley and the Wailers' Mento Roots." Beat 25.2 (2006): p.50. 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. Meanwhile, Jamaican expatriates started issuing 45s on small independent labels in the United Kingdom, many mastered directly from Jamaican 45s.
Ska arose in Jamaican studios in the late 1950s, developing from this mix of American R&B, and mento. 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. 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. 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.
Emergence in Jamaica 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. From its earliest years, reggae evolved in a variety of stylistic directions, from the raw sound of Lee Perry's "People Funny Boy" to the polished recordings of Third World's "Now That We've Found Love", while retaining its distinctive rhythmic foundation."Reggae." Encyclopedia of Popular Music, 4th ed. Ed. Colin Larkin. Oxford Music Online. Oxford University Press. Web. 16 February 2016. 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.
The emergence of reggae took place amid the growing influence of Rastafari and Black consciousness in Jamaica, contributing to the development of the roots reggae style. Burning Spear recalled that Rastafarian ideas increasingly resonated with people who did not necessarily identify as Rastafarians, and that musicians drew on the movement's emphasis on Africa and culture. He also associated this shift with changes in reggae's rhythmic patterns and the increasing prominence of African and cultural themes in songwriting. Producer Derrick Harriott also recalled that many of the socially conscious recordings that emerged around 1970 reflected the musicians' own experiences of poverty and hardship. He said that performers from Kingston's poorer communities used such songs to express shared experiences and reflect the hardships faced by their audiences. Despite the growing influence of Rastafarian ideas on reggae, openly Rastafarian musicians continued to face discrimination within Jamaica's music industry. Promoters, club owners, and other industry figures were often reluctant to book or employ musicians who wore dreadlocks, limiting employment opportunities for Rastafarian musicians.
Early 1968 was when the first bona fide reggae records were released: "Nanny Goat" by Larry Marshall and "No More Heartaches" by the Beltones. The rapid commercial growth of reggae in the late 1960s was aided by major changes in Jamaica's music industry. Increased retail sales of records led to the expansion of specialist record shops and formal distribution networks, reducing reliance on sound systems as the primary means of circulating music. This shift enabled a new generation of independent producers, such as Bunny Lee and Harry J, to enter the industry without operating their own sound systems or retail shops. With studios available for hourly rental, record production became less expensive and more accessible, contributing to a sharp increase in the volume of recordings and accelerating reggae's spread. During the late 1960s and early 1970s, toasting became an increasingly prominent feature of reggae. Deejays such as U-Roy and Big Youth improvised rhythmic vocals over records on Jamaican sound systems, while the introduction of dubplates and instrumental versions expanded opportunities for live deejay performances. In 1968, 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.Kevin O'Brien Chang, 1998, Reggae Routes, p. 44.