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.
Toasting or deejaying is the act of talking, usually in a monotone melody, over a rhythm or beat by a deejay. It can either be improvised or pre-written. Toasting developed in Jamaica, before it took up that name and being part of the sound system era, a similar sound of it is found in mento and now can be heard over musical styles including ska, reggae, dancehall, dub, grime, hip hop, soca and bouyon music. The combination of singing and toasting is known as singjaying.
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.
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.
There are several subgenres of reggae music including various predecessors to the form.
Stephen Robert Nesta Marley is a Jamaican-American musician. The son of Bob Marley, Marley is an eight-time Grammy Award winner, three times as a solo artist, twice as a producer of his younger paternal half-brother Damian Marley's Halfway Tree and Welcome to Jamrock albums, and a further three times as a member of his older brother Ziggy Marley's group Ziggy Marley & The Melody Makers.
Though reggae music first developed in Jamaica, it has strong rhythmic and thematic associations with Africa and has been called "the quintessential African/third world/black musical form". There are many African reggae musicians with a wide fan base both on the continent and abroad. Well-known African reggae artists are Alpha Blondy, Pax Nindi aka Harare Dread, Majek Fashek, Tiken Jah Fakoly, Colbert Mukwevho,Thomani Tshikororo, Ismael Isaac, Radical Dread, Jambo, Soul Raiders, Lucky Dube, and Serges Kassy.
Reggae Sumfest is the largest music festival in Jamaica and the Caribbean, taking place each year in mid-July in Montego Bay. Sumfest started in 1993.
Heartbeat Records is an independent record label based in Burlington, Massachusetts. The label specializes in Jamaican music.
Uzziah "Sticky" Thompson was a Jamaican percussionist, vocalist and deejay active from the late 1950s. He worked with some of the best known performers of Jamaican music and played on hundreds of albums.
Earl "Chinna" Smith, a.k.a. Earl Flute and Melchezidek the High Priest, is a Jamaican guitarist active since the late 1960s. He is most well known for his work with the Soul Syndicate band and as guitarist for Bob Marley & the Wailers, among others, and has recorded with many reggae artists, appearing on more than 500 albums.
Jahmekya is a studio album by the reggae group Ziggy Marley and the Melody Makers, released in 1991.
BisRock is a subgenre of Pinoy rock, propagated by the Cebu rock music industry in the Philippines. The term, which is in the blended form, comes from the Cebuano words Bisaya, referring the Visayan languages, and "rock", for rock music. The term was coined by Cebuano writer Januar E. Yap in 2002 and was first applied to Missing Filemon's first album. Earning wide reception among the young in the Visayas and Mindanao, Bisrock is a fairly recent cultural phenomenon. The style started around the 1980s, when Cebu's rock scene was beginning to be labeled as "Bisrock". During this time, a group of musicians from the University of San Carlos coined the local music scene as Bisrock in support of patriotism for the Cebuano music scene. However, this genre is debatable as Bisrock seems to be popular only in Cebu. As it is, the movement died down around 2009, as even Missing Filemon themselves distanced itself from the term "Bisrock".
Reggae fusion is a fusion genre of reggae that mixes reggae and/or dancehall with other genres, such as pop, rock, hip-hop/rap, R&B, jazz, funk, soul, disco, electronic, and Latin music, amongst others.
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.
Brownman Revival is a Filipino reggae band founded in November 1994. They count Bob Marley, Big Mountain, Aswad, Inner Circle, and UB40 among their musical influences as well as Filipino reggae group Tropical Depression and OPM acts such as Eraserheads, APO Hiking Society, and VST & Company. One author describes Brownman Revival's music as "reggae-inspired beats with traditional folk pop rhythms and the basest of lyrical themes".
