Reggae Music example essay topic

Music has always been an important factor in the lives of Jamaicans and other West Indians. As rock music's popularity spread around the world, virtually every nation had its own rock performers. Jamaica produced reggae music. By the 1950's Jamaican youth were more interested in listening to American music, widely heard by radio stations in the US south, and sound systems. Reggae rhythms are tremendously complex, the music features songs about poverty, politics, and Rastafarianism, the Jamaica based religious cult. It is a combination of traditional African rhythms, American rhythm and blues and Jamaican folk.

The style is strictly Jamaican and includes offbeat rhythms, up-stroke guitar strums, chanted vocal patterns and lyrics. Reggae's direct forefather is Ska. Relying on skittering guitar and syncopated rhythms, Ska was their interpretation of R&B and it was quite popular in the early '60's. However, during one very hot summer, it was too hot to either play or dance to Ska, so the beat was slowed down and reggae was born. Bob Marley and his group, the Wailers, were largely responsible for the widespread popularity of reggae. The film The Harder They Come (1973) brought the style to the United States.

Reggae influenced a generation of white musicians notably Paul Simon and Eric Clapton and reggae modes can often be detected in today's rock and rap music. After the death of Bob Marley, the style lost much of its international energy, with the exception of a few bands such as Black Uhuru and Steel Pulse, and singer Linton Kweli Johnson, a Jamaican poet living in England. The merging of rap and reggae into a style called dub or toasting, as well as the appearance of younger performers such as Ziggy Marley (Bob's son), revitalized reggae in the late 1980's and 1990's. While only few Jamaican recordings have crossed over to audiences beyond the Jamaican community, it's hard to think of any genre of popular music that has had a greater influence in the past two decades. Mainstream rock stars from Eric Clapton and the Stones to the Clash and the Fugees have covered reggae hits, but more important has been Jamaica's music effect on the worldwide dance scene. Major features of Jamaican dancehall culture the megawatt sound systems, the exclusive 'one-off' recordings, the foregrounding of drum and bass, and the practice of rapping over rhythm tracks - have been appropriated by rave and dance culture.

Other reggae innovations, like the dub remix, have been assimilated into wider popular music. All in all, Reggae has exerted an international musical and social impact remarkable for a relatively small nation The Loudest Island in the World..