Reggae is a music genre that originated in Jamaica during 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. Reggae is rooted out from traditional Jamaican Kumina, Pukkumina, Revival Zion, Nyabinghi, and burru drumming. Jamaican reggae music evolved out of the earlier genres mento, 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.
Sir Steve Rodney McQueen is a British film director, film producer, screenwriter, and video artist. Known for directing films that deal with intense subject matters, he has received several awards including an Academy Award, two BAFTA Awards and a Golden Globe Award. He was honoured with the BFI Fellowship in 2016 and was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 2020 for services to art and film. In 2014, he was included in Time magazine's annual Time 100 list of the "most influential people in the world".
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.
People from the Caribbean have made significant contributions to British Black music for many generations.
The New Cross house fire was a fire that occurred during a party at a house in New Cross, south-east London, in the early hours of Sunday, 18 January 1981. The blaze killed 13 young black people aged between 14 and 22, and one survivor killed himself two years later.
Dennis Bovell is a Barbados-born reggae guitarist, bass player and record producer, based in the United Kingdom. He was a member of a progressive rock group called Stonehenge, who later changed name and became the British reggae band Matumbi, and released dub-reggae records under his own name as well as the pseudonym Blackbeard. He is most widely known for his decades-spanning collaborations with Linton Kwesi Johnson.
Courttia Newland is a British writer of Jamaican and Barbadian heritage.
Donovan Letts is a British film director, disc jockey (DJ) and musician. Letts first came to prominence as the videographer for the Clash, directing several of their music videos. In 1984, Letts co-founded the band Big Audio Dynamite with former Clash lead guitarist and co-lead vocalist Mick Jones, acting as the band's sampler and videographer before departing the band in 1990.
Lovers rock is a style of reggae music.
The Cimarons are a British reggae band formed in 1967. They were the UK's first self-contained indigenous reggae band.
John Masouri is a journalist, author, reviewer and historian for Jamaican music and several of its musical offshoots including dub, roots and dancehall. He is one of the world's foremost reggae music journalist and has worked extensively over it.
Lovers rock is a style of reggae music noted for its romantic sound and content. While love songs had been an important part of reggae since the late 1960s, the style was given a greater focus and a name in London in the mid-1970s.
Carol Simms, better known as Kofi, is a British lovers rock singer who was a member of the group Brown Sugar prior to embarking on a solo career.
"Silly Games" is a song written by Dennis Bovell that was first released in 1979 as a single by Janet Kay. The single was a hit not only in the UK, where it reached number 2 that summer, but throughout Europe. Kay's appearance singing on Top of the Pops made it the first lover's rock tune on BBC Television's flagship popular music show. The song appeared again in 1990 as a re-recording, billed as by Lindy Layton featuring Janet Kay, which reached number 22 in the charts. A remix version of Kay's original recording spent three weeks in the UK Singles Chart, peaking at number 62.
Micheal Ward is a Jamaican-born English actor and former model. His films include Blue Story (2018) and The Old Guard (2020). On television, he appeared as Jamie in the Netflix show Top Boy and The A List. Ward was awarded the 2020 BAFTA Rising Star Award.
Small Axe is a British anthology film series, created and directed by Steve McQueen. The anthology consists of five films that tell distinct stories about the lives of West Indian immigrants in London from the 1960s to the 1980s. Two episodes of the series were selected into the 2020 Cannes Film Festival. The series premiered on 15 November 2020 on BBC One in the United Kingdom and on 20 November 2020 on Amazon Prime Video in the United States. The title references a proverb – "Small axe fall big tree" or "If you are the big tree, we are the small axe" – that was popularised by Bob Marley in his 1973 song "Small Axe".
Mangrove is a 2020 historical drama film directed by British director Steve McQueen and co-written by McQueen and Alastair Siddons, about the Mangrove restaurant in west London and the 1971 trial of the Mangrove Nine. It stars Letitia Wright, Shaun Parkes, Malachi Kirby, Rochenda Sandall, Alex Jennings and Jack Lowden.
Red, White and Blue is a 2020 historical drama film directed by Steve McQueen and co-written by McQueen and Courttia Newland. It stars John Boyega as Leroy Logan, an officer in the London Metropolitan Police who founded the Black Police Association and attempted to reform the police force from within. The film was released as part of the anthology series Small Axe on BBC One on 29 November 2020, and released on Amazon Prime Video on 4 December 2020. It premiered as an opening film at the 58th New York Film Festival on 24 September 2020.
Amarah-Jae St. Aubyn is an English actress known for playing the lead role in the 2020 movie Lovers Rock. She was named one of the 2020 Screen International Stars of Tomorrow.
Francis Lovehall is a Jamaican actor based in London.
