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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.
Calypso is a style of Caribbean music that originated in Trinidad and Tobago during the early to the mid-19th century and spread to the rest of the Caribbean Antilles by the mid-20th century. Its rhythms can be traced back to West African Kaiso and the arrival of French planters and their slaves from the French Antilles in the 18th century.
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.
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.
There are several subgenres of reggae music including various predecessors to the form.
Johnny Clarke is a Jamaican reggae musician, best known for his recordings with producer Bunny Lee in the 1970s.
Lorenzo "Laurel" Aitken was a Cuban-Jamaican singer and one of the pioneers of ska music. He is often referred to as the "Godfather of Ska".
People from the Caribbean have made significant contributions to British Black music for many generations.
Clancy Eccles was a Jamaican ska and reggae singer, songwriter, arranger, promoter, record producer and talent scout. Known mostly for his early reggae works, he brought a political dimension to this music. His house band was known as The Dynamites.
Kentrick Patrick OD, known professionally as Lord Creator, was a Trinidadian calypso, R&B, ska, and rocksteady musician and singer. Alongside Cuban-born Roland Alphonso, Barbadian Jackie Opel and fellow Trinidadians Lynn Taitt and Lord Brynner, Lord Creator was an important and positive "outside" influence during the early development of the Jamaican music scene.
Joseph Abraham Gordon, better known as Lord Tanamo, was a Jamaican-Canadian singer and songwriter best known for his mento and ska work.
Pama Records is a British record label active during the 1960s and 1970s. Initially focused on soul music, it became one of the major outlets for reggae in the UK.
Theophilus Beckford was a Jamaican pianist and one of the pioneers of Jamaican popular music during the transition from rhythm 'n' blues to Jamaican ska.
Sugar Belly was a Jamaican mento musician in the mid 20th century. Sugar Belly's music was distinctive for his use of a homemade bamboo saxophone, as well as the bamboo fife. His fine playing can be heard on many mento recordings of the 1950s and 1960s, as well as his 1970s Studio One instrumental, solo reggae album entitled Sugar Merengue. There were other bamboo sax players in Jamaica, including Wilbert Stephenson, who recorded extensively with Chin's Calypso Quartet in the 1950s.
Lord Flea was the stage name of Norman Byfield Thomas, a Jamaican mento musician credited with "helping start the calypso craze in U.S." With his band The Calypsonians, Flea toured America throughout the late 1950s, and released an album on the Capitol label. The band also performed in two calypso-related films.
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.
Count Lasher was the stage-name of Terence Parkins, a Jamaican singer and songwriter. Born in the mountainous parish of Saint Thomas, Lasher predominantly utilized first rural, and then urban mento styles in his music, although in later years he recorded some ska and reggae singles. Successful and prolific in output, Count Lasher remains an overlooked figure in the history of Jamaican music.
Kade Simon, better known as Lord Brynner, was a Trinidadian calypsonian who won the Trinidad and Tobago Independence Calypso Contest in 1962. He also had a number of Ska hits in Jamaica during the mid-1960s.
Stanley Motta was an electronics store proprietor who established a record label in Kingston, Jamaica and opened the first privately owned recording studio in Jamaica in 1951, jump starting Jamaica's music industry.
References
- 1 2 3 4 Michael Garnice (11 March 2012). "Mento Music: Lord Messam" . Retrieved 18 April 2013.
- 1 2 3 geteisem69POPERA (29 November 2011). "Origins of Ska: the Mento". Skarumble.com: Ska Rocksteady Reggae & Jamaican Music. Archived from the original on 27 March 2013. Retrieved 18 April 2013.
{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link) - ↑ "Biography: Clancy Eccles". Reggae Train. Archived from the original on 29 December 2008. Retrieved 2 May 2013.
- ↑ Tannehill Neely, Daniel (2007). Mento, Jamaica's Original Music: Development, Tourism and the Nationalist Frame. p. 164. ISBN 978-0549582649.
- ↑ "Trojan: Clancy Eccles". Trojan Records. Retrieved 19 April 2013.