Reggae

St. James Encyclopedia of Pop Culture by Timothy Berg

Reggae is a broad term encompassing a related variety of musical styles that emerged from the island nation of Jamaica after 1960. These styles include ska, rock steady, reggae, and dancehall, all of which swept Jamaican music in distinct stylistic waves, one after the other, during the 1960s and 1970s. Musically, these styles share a common loping rhythm that accents the subsidiary beat. Reggae, however, is many things to many people. It can be seen as merely another great Caribbean dance rhythm, but at the same time many of its songs have highly political overtones. It is also often associated with the Rastafarian religion, an ascetic, millenarian sect that originated in part in the back-to-Africa teachings of Marcus Garvey in the 1920s and 1930s. Since its arrival on the world scene after 1960, reggae and its associated musical styles have become immensely popular around the world. It is one of the world's first truly international musical forms, both in its origins and in its worldwide appeal.

Reggae's origins come from a unique blend of Caribbean musical styles and American rhythm and blues from the 1950s. Prior to World War II, the most popular musical style in Jamaica was mento, which drew from Caribbean forms such as calypso, merengue, and rumba, as well as older African-derived folk styles. After World War II, Jamaicans began to hear R&B music being broadcast from the United States, particularly from New Orleans. In comparison to the BBC-style official radio programming coming from within Jamaica, these R&B sounds were a breath of fresh air. Early American R&B pioneers such as Louis Jordan, Roscoe Gordon, and Fats Domino were immensely popular in Jamaica during the 1950s. These records were also promoted in Jamaica by sound-system operators who carried portable speakers and record players in their trucks, playing at parties and selling records. As the classic phase of R&B music dried up in the late 1950s, Jamaicans turned to producing R&B-inspired music themselves. The first result of these efforts was "ska," a hybrid of R&B and mento musical forms that featured shuffling rhythms, accented on the second and fourth beats, a chopped guitar or piano sound, and a loose horn section. Ska became the dominant musical style in Jamaica after 1960, propelled by such groups as the Skatalites, the Ska Kings, the Soul Vendors, the Maytals, and Millie Small, whose song "My Boy Lollipop" was an international hit. Much of this music was produced by new Jamaican-run studios, notably those of Coxsone Dodd, Duke Reid, and Prince Buster, all of whom were veterans of the sound-system circuit. Jamaica's political independence from Great Britain in 1962 further strengthened the desire to produce all-Jamaican musical forms, and the dance rhythms of ska provided a soundtrack to the celebrations that accompanied independence. The era of ska's dominance lasted until about 1966, although the style continues to have adherents and practitioners, especially in the United States and Great Britain, where it was revived in the late 1970s.

By 1966, following American R&B's evolution into gospel-inspired soul music, the ska style gave way to slower rhythms called "rock steady," after the Alton Ellis hit "Get Ready to Rock Steady." Other musicians, such as Hopeton Lewis with "Take It Easy" and the Heptones with "Ting a Ling," contributed to the new rock-steady style. The music slowed down, and the horns largely disappeared, replaced in dominance by a more melodic bass line. While rock steady was certainly dance music, it was not without its social commentary aspects: Desmond Dekker's "Shanty Town" commented on life in the ghetto communities around Kingston; the Ethiopians sang about the wave of strikes afflicting Jamaica in 1968 with their song "Everything Crash." As innovative as rock steady was in Jamaican music, combining sweeter melodies, lyrics worth listening to, and new rhythmic combinations, the rock steady era lasted only until about 1969.

Replacing rock steady was a new sound, reggae, a name that eventually would be applied to all of Jamaican music. The exact meaning of the term is unclear, some claiming it means ragged or street rough. Others defined reggae as a general term referring to poor people who were suffering. For others it was simply a beat. Musically, reggae slowed the rock steady beat down even further with a stronger bass driving the beat, a loping, chopping guitar sound, and more rhythmic freedom for the drummer to play around the beat of the bass. Early reggae records, such as Toots and the Maytals' "Do the Reggay" blended elements of rock steady and reggae. Much of this new sound came from new producers such as Lee Perry, Clancy Eccles, and Bunny Lee, who established their own studios in the late 1960s. Unable to hire established studio musicians, they turned to younger talents such as Aston and Carlton Barrett and Leroy Wallace. These producers and musicians established the new reggae beat that soon became the most popular style in Jamaica, eclipsing both ska and rock steady.