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. 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.
Island Records is a Jamaican multinational record label owned by Universal Music Group. It was founded in 1959 by Chris Blackwell, Graeme Goodall, and Leslie Kong in Jamaica, and was eventually sold to PolyGram in 1989. Island and A&M Records, another label recently acquired by PolyGram, were both at the time the largest independent record labels in history, with Island having exerted a major influence on the progressive music scene in the United Kingdom in the early 1970s. Island Records operates four international divisions: Island US, Island UK, Island Australia, and Island France. Current key people include Island US president Darcus Beese, and MD Jon Turner. Partially due to its significant legacy, Island remains one of UMG's pre-eminent record labels.
"Punky Reggae Party" is a song by Bob Marley, recorded and released in 1977. Not appearing on any studio album, it was released in 1977 as a 12-inch single in Jamaica only on the Tuff Gong and Lee Perry's Black Art labels, as a B-side to the "Jamming" single on Chris Blackwell's Island Records label in some countries and was later released as a live single on Babylon by Bus. Subsequently, it appeared on a number of compilations and "Best of" albums as well as the Deluxe Edition of Exodus and the 2002 CD reissue of Legend.
The Maytals, known from 1972 to 2020 as Toots and the Maytals, are a Jamaican musical group, one of the best known ska and rocksteady vocal groups. The Maytals were formed in the early 1960s and were key figures in popularizing reggae music.
Bob Marley and the Wailers were a Jamaican ska, rocksteady and reggae band. The founding members, in 1963, were Bob Marley, Peter Tosh, and Bunny Wailer.
Leslie Kong was a Jamaican reggae producer.
Lowell Fillmore "Sly" Dunbar is a Jamaican drummer, best known as one half of the prolific Jamaican rhythm section and reggae production duo Sly and Robbie.
Christopher Percy Gordon Blackwell OJ is a Jamaican-British former record producer and the founder of Island Records, which has been called "one of Britain's great independent labels." According to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, to which Blackwell was inducted in 2001, he is "the single person most responsible for turning the world on to reggae music." Variety describes him as "indisputably one of the greatest record executives in history," while Barron's has described him as "a contender for most interesting man in the world."
Frederick Nathaniel "Toots" Hibbert, was a Jamaican singer and songwriter who was the lead vocalist for the reggae and ska band Toots and the Maytals. A reggae pioneer, he performed for six decades and helped establish some of the fundamentals of reggae music. Hibbert's 1968 song "Do the Reggay" is widely credited as the genesis of the genre name reggae. His band's album True Love won a Grammy Award in 2005.
Judith Veronica Mowatt, is a Jamaican reggae artist. As well as being a solo artist, from 1974 she was also a member of the I Threes, the trio of backing vocalists for Bob Marley & The Wailers.
Marcia Llyneth Griffiths is a Jamaican singer best known for the 1989 remix of her single "Electric Boogie", which serves as the music for the four-wall "Electric Slide" line dance. It is the best-selling single of all time by a female reggae singer.
Beverley's was a Jamaican record label active between 1961 and 1971, owned by the record producer Leslie Kong. Beverley's was essential to the development of ska and rocksteady into reggae. The label launched the careers of Jimmy Cliff and Bob Marley, having released Cliff's first recording "Dearest Beverley" in 1961 and Marley's early singles "Judge Not" and "One Cup of Coffee" in 1962.
Robert Nesta Marley was a Jamaican singer, songwriter, and guitarist. Considered one of the pioneers of reggae, he fused elements of reggae, ska and rocksteady and was renowned for his distinctive vocal and songwriting style. Marley increased the visibility of Jamaican music worldwide and made him a global figure in popular culture. He became known as a Rastafarian icon, and he infused his music with a sense of spirituality. Marley is also considered a global symbol of Jamaican music and culture and identity and was controversial in his outspoken support for democratic social reforms. Marley also supported the legalisation of cannabis and advocated for Pan-Africanism.
Funky Kingston is the name of two albums by Jamaican reggae group Toots and the Maytals. The first was issued in Jamaica and the United Kingdom in 1973 on Dragon Records, a subsidiary label of Island Records, owned by Chris Blackwell. A different album, with the same cover and title, was issued in the United States in 1975 on Mango Records. That album was compiled from three previous Maytals albums by Island Records employee Danny Holloway and peaked at #164 on the Billboard 200. It was also voted the eleventh best album of 1975 in the annual Jazz & Pop poll. In 2003, the American version was placed at number 378 on Rolling Stone's list of The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time, 380 in a 2012 revised list and 344 in a 2020 revised list.
Wayne Jobson, also known as Native Wayne, is a Jamaican record producer of European ancestry. He has worked with such artists as No Doubt, Gregory Isaacs and Toots & the Maytals. He hosts the weekly radio show "Alter Native" every Sunday afternoon on Indie 103.1. He previously hosted a similar radio show, "Reggae Revolution", at Indie's main competitor KROQ-FM. Jobson is also known as a musician. He recorded an album in 1977 produced by Lee 'Scratch' Perry at the Black Ark.
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.
Neville O'Riley Livingston, known professionally as Bunny Wailer, was a Jamaican singer-songwriter and percussionist. He was an original member of reggae group The Wailers along with Bob Marley and Peter Tosh. A three-time Grammy Award winner, he is considered one of the longtime standard-bearers of reggae music. He was also known as Jah B, Bunny O'Riley, and Bunny Livingston.
This Is Reggae Music: The Golden Era 1960–1975 is a reggae retrospective anthology issued as a 4-CD box set in 2004 by Trojan Records. The anthology, which was compiled by Colin Escott and Bas Hartong, is arranged in chronological order and features tracks by various artists, starting with mento and ska from the first half of the 1960s, then progressing to the slower rhythms of rocksteady and reggae, which both emerged later in the decade, continuing into the 1970s. Several of the acts featured are Derrick Morgan, Desmond Decker & the Aces, Toots & the Maytals, Jimmy Cliff, and Bob Marley and the Wailers.
Clifton "Jackie" Jackson is a Jamaican bass player, who was an important and prolific session musician and bassist on ska, rocksteady, reggae, dub and discomix records throughout the 1960s and 1970s, and was later a member of Toots and the Maytals.
Got to Be Tough is a studio album by Jamaican reggae band Toots and the Maytals. It was released through Trojan Jamaica/BMG on 28 August 2020 and financed by Trojan Jamaica owner Zak Starkey, who also played guitar for the recording. The album is the first studio release from Toots and the Maytals in more than a decade and the first after an accident wherein bandleader Toots Hibbert was hit in the head with a glass bottle, leading to his hiatus from performing. The lyrical content of the album is political, featuring pleas for unity among people.
