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Reggae is a music genre that originated in Jamaica in the late 1960s. The term also denotes the modern popular music of Jamaica and its diaspora. A 1968 single by Toots and the Maytals, "Do the Reggay", was the first popular song to use the word reggae, effectively naming the genre and introducing it to a global audience. 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 was strongly influenced by traditional mento as well as by American jazz and rhythm and blues, and evolved out of the earlier genres ska and rocksteady. Reggae usually relates news, social gossip, and political commentary. It is instantly recognizable from the counterpoint between the bass and drum downbeat and the offbeat rhythm section. The immediate origins of reggae were in ska and rocksteady; from the latter, reggae took over the use of the bass as a percussion instrument.
Roots reggae is a subgenre of reggae that deals with the everyday lives and aspirations of Africans and those in the African Diaspora, including the spiritual side of Rastafari, black liberation, revolution and the honouring of God, called Jah by Rastafarians. It is identified with the life of the ghetto sufferer, and the rural poor. Lyrical themes include spirituality and religion, struggles by artists, poverty, black pride, social issues, resistance to fascism, capitalism, corrupt government and racial oppression. A spiritual repatriation to Africa is a common theme in roots reggae.
The music of Jamaica includes Jamaican folk music and many popular genres, such as mento, ska, rocksteady, reggae, dub music, dancehall, reggae fusion and related styles.
Jungle is a genre of dance music that developed out of the UK rave scene and sound system culture in the 1990s. Emerging from breakbeat hardcore, the style is characterised by rapid breakbeats, heavily syncopated percussive loops, samples, and synthesised effects, combined with the deep basslines, melodies, and vocal samples found in dub, reggae and dancehall, as well as hip hop and funk. Many producers frequently sampled the "Amen break" or other breakbeats from funk and jazz recordings. Jungle was a direct precursor to the drum and bass genre which emerged in the mid-1990s.
Mento is a style of Jamaican folk music that predates and has greatly influenced ska and reggae music. It is a fusion of African rhythmic elements and European elements, which reached peak popularity in the 1940s and 1950s. Mento typically features acoustic instruments, such as acoustic guitar, banjo, hand drums, and the rhumba box — a large mbira in the shape of a box that can be sat on while played. The rhumba box carries the bass part of the music.
Popular music of the United Kingdom in the 1970s built upon the new forms of music developed from blues rock towards the end of the 1960s, including folk rock and psychedelic rock movements. Several important and influential subgenres were created in Britain in this period, by pursuing the limitations of rock music, including British folk rock and glam rock, a process that reached its apogee in the development of progressive rock and one of the most enduring subgenres in heavy metal music. Britain also began to be increasingly influenced by third world music, including Jamaican and Indian music, resulting in new music scenes and subgenres. In the middle years of the decade the influence of the pub rock and American punk rock movements led to the British intensification of punk, which swept away much of the existing landscape of popular music, replacing it with much more diverse new wave and post punk bands who mixed different forms of music and influences to dominate rock and pop music into the 1980s.
Rude boy is a subculture that originated from 1960s Jamaican street culture. In the late 1970s, there was a revival in England of the terms rude boy and rude girl, among other variations like rudeboy and rudebwoy, being used to describe fans of two-tone and ska. This revival of the subculture and term was partially the result of Jamaican immigration to the UK and the so-called ”Windrush” generation. The use of these terms moved into the more contemporary ska punk movement as well. In the UK and especially Jamaica, the terms rude boy and rude girl are used in a way similar to gangsta, yardie, or badman.
Edward O'Sullivan Lee OD, better known as Bunny "Striker" Lee, was a Jamaican record producer. He was known as a pioneer of the United Kingdom reggae market, licensing his productions to Trojan Records in the early 1970s, and later working with Lee "Scratch" Perry and King Tubby.
Joseph Vere Everette Johns was a Jamaican journalist, impresario, radio personality, and actor, who helped to launch the careers of many Jamaican musicians through his popular talent contests.
In Jamaican popular culture, a sound system is a group of disc jockeys, engineers and MCs playing ska, rocksteady or reggae music. The sound system is an important part of Jamaican culture and history.
Lloyd Daley, also known as Lloyd's the Matador, was a Jamaican electronic technician, sound system pioneer, studio engineer and reggae record producer.
Leroy Sibbles is a Jamaican reggae musician and producer. He was the lead singer for The Heptones in the 1960s and 1970s.
David Victor Emmanuel, better known as Smiley Culture, was a British reggae singer and DJ known for his "fast chat" style. During a relatively brief period of fame and success, he produced two of the most critically acclaimed reggae singles of the 1980s. He died on 15 March 2011, aged 48, during a police raid on his home. An inquest found that his death was a suicide. Campaigners and his family have expressed scepticism about the official verdict and the police version of events.
The Meditations are a reggae vocal harmony group from Jamaica formed in late 1974. They have released several studio albums and are still performing in the 2000s and today.
Right Time is the 1976 studio album debut of influential reggae band the Mighty Diamonds. The album, released by Virgin Records after they signed the Mighty Diamonds following a search for talent in Jamaica, is critically regarded as a reggae classic, a landmark in the roots reggae subgenre. Several of the album's socially conscious songs were hits in the band's native Jamaica, with a few becoming successful in the UK underground. Influential and sometimes unconventional, the album helped secure the success of recording studio Channel One Studios, and rhythm team Sly Dunbar and Robbie Shakespeare.
Fitzroy Edwards, better known by his stage name Edi Fitzroy, was a Jamaican reggae singer, active from 1975 but best known for his work during the dancehall era.
Vincent George Forbes, better known as Duke Vin, was a Jamaican-born sound system operator and selector who operated the first sound system in the United Kingdom.
Kenneth Lloyd Khouri was a pioneering Jamaican record producer and founder of Federal Records, the first recording studio in Jamaica, which was sold to Bob Marley's Tuff Gong record label in 1981. He is credited by reggae historians for the birth of rocksteady in the 1960s. Rocksteady later mixed with Jamaican mento, a genre in which Khouri also had a pioneering role, leading to the creation of reggae music.
Melodisc Records was a record label founded by Emil E. Shalit in the late 1940s. It was one of the first independent record labels in the UK and the parent company of the Blue Beat label.
Hopelessly in Love is the debut album by English lovers rock singer Carroll Thompson, released in early 1981 by Carib Gems Records. The album followed, and includes, her two Leonard Chin-produced singles "I'm So Sorry" and "Simply in Love", which topped the British reggae charts. Thompson co-created C & B Productions, a first for a female reggae singer in Britain, and under this credit wrote and produced the album, working additionally with producer Anthony Richards. Backed by Thompson's C & B band, the album exemplifies the soul-infused mellow reggae style typical to lovers rock and Thompson's sweetly voice, with her songs discussing themes of romance and love.
References
- ↑ "Lloyd Bradley plus laser-etched solid-brass Michael Jackson party invite". Archived from the original on 13 December 2021 – via www.youtube.com.
- ↑ "recordofweektemplate". www.reggaezine.co.uk.
- ↑ Ian Thomson, "Sounds Like London by Lloyd Bradley, review" ("a lively history of the enduring impact of black music on British life"), The Telegraph , 22 September 2013.
- ↑ Sukhdev Sandhu, "Sounds Like London by Lloyd Bradley – review" ("A welcome homage to London's black musicians covers the styles that other surveys miss"), The Guardian , 22 August 2013.
- ↑ Bim Adewunmi, "Sounds Like London by Lloyd Bradley: An intensive, lovingly written account of 100 years of black music in the capital", New Statesman , 22 August 2013.
- ↑ Margaret Busby, "Book review: Sounds Like London: 100 Years Of Black Music In The Capital, By Lloyd Bradley" ("This survey of the capital's black music-makers is not just a fine anthology but also social history"), The Independent, 20 September 2013.
- ↑ Biography, Lloyd Bradley website.
