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Jamaican Forum is an online discussion and forum board covering several topics and interest to Jamaican both home and abroad.
Reggae's origins are in traditional African and Caribbean music; American rhythm and blues; and in Jamaican ska and rocksteady.
The word reggae may have been first used by the vocal group the Maytals, in the title of their 1968 rocksteady hit Do the Reggay. The Oxford English Dictionary says the origin of the word is unknown, but may be derived from the Jamaican-English word rege-rege, meaning quarrel. Other theories are that the word means torn clothes or that the term came from the word streggae (a Jamaican slang term for prostitute).
By the mid 1970s, reggae was getting radio play in the United Kingdom on John Peel's radio show, and Peel continued to play much reggae during his career. Reggae has always had a fairly large following in the United Kingdom, especially during the 1970s and 1980s. In the second half of the 1970s, the UK punk rock scene was starting to take off, and some punk DJs played reggae records during their DJ sets. Certain punk bands, such as The Clash, The Slits and The Ruts incorporated reggae influences into their music. Reggae includes several subgenres, such as, roots reggae, dub, lovers rock and dancehall.
The dancehall genre developed around 1980, with exponents such as Yellowman, Super Cat and Shabba Ranks. The style is characterized by a deejay singing and rapping or toasting over raw and fast rhythms. Ragga (also known as raggamuffin), is a subgenre of dancehall, in which the instrumentation primarily consists of electronic music and sampling. Reggaeton is a form of dance music that first became popular with Latino youths in the early 1990s. It blends reggae and dancehall with Latin American genres such as bomba and plena, as well with hip hop. Reggae rock is a fusion genre that combines elements of reggae and rock music. The bands Sublime and 311 are known for this reggae rock fusion, as is singer Matisyahu, a Hasidic Jew, who blends it with traditional Jewish music. Billboard magazine named him "Top Reggae Artist" of 2006.
He was born Nesta Robert Marley, February 6, 1945, at St Ann's Parish, Jamaica. Singer, songwriter, guitarist and bandleader in the Jamaican national idiom of reggae, his greatness as a musician combining with transparent honesty and hatred of violence to make him the only world-wide superstar the genre has had. His mother was Jamaican, father English; he read palms as a child, but began singing after spending a year in Kingston at age six; moved there permanently '57, growing up in the tough slum of Trench Town, where youths became street anarchists, jobless in Eden because of the island's primitive economy after more than 400 years of colonial rule.
Bob Marley put out nothing but the best of what reggae music has to offer. Bob Marley was the catalyst for the great reggae movement that put reggae on the worldwide map. If it wasn't for Bob, there might not have been a Bigupradio or at least maybe not for another 15-20 years. We have a dedicated Bob page you can find here. Listening to Bob's poetic music is pure meditation. Some of his great many hits inlude "Kaya", "African Herbsman", "Bad Card", "Satisfy My Soul", "Sun Is Shining", "No Woman No Cry", "Exodus", "Natural Mystic", "Concrete Jungle" but we can't list them all. If don't own a half a dozen Bob albums yet then you may want to start with his wonderful Box Set "Songs of Freedom."
