Popular Jamaican Music: The Origin Of Reggae Music

1. Origins of reggae music:

Reggae is a music genre first developed in Jamaica in the late 1960s. While sometimes used in a broad sense to refer to most types of popular Jamaican dance music, the term reggae more properly denotes a particular music style that evolved out of the earlier genres like Ska and Rocksteady. “Reggae” comes from the term “rege-rege” which means “rags” or “ragged clothes”, and this gives you your first clue into the story behind reggae music. Reggae is a music genre first developed in Jamaica in the late 1960s. While sometimes used in a broad sense to refer to most types of popular Jamaican dance music, the term reggae more properly denotes a particular music style that evolved out of the earlier genres like Ska and Rocksteady.

Reggae music was considered a rag-tag, hodge-podge of other musical styles, namely Jamaican Mento and contemporary Jamaican Ska music, along with American jazz and rhythm & blues, something like what was coming out of New Orleans at the time. Most listeners didn’t even distinguish reggae from Jamaican dancehall music or the slowed down version of ska music known as Rocksteady, until possibly when the band Toots and the Maytals came along. Their

The earliest reggae lyrics spoke mostly of love, specifically romantic love between a man and a woman. But as the music and the musicians making it made their way into the 1970s, reggae started taking on a heavy Rastafarian influence. The lyrics about love weren’t just about romantic love, but cosmic, spiritual love, the love of one’s fellow man and of God/“Jah” (Used by Bob Marley and other Jamaican reggae singers). When reggae singers weren’t singing about love, they were singing about rebellion and revolution against the forces contradicting that love, like the extreme violence, poverty, racism, and government oppression they were witnessing or experiencing on a regular