Reggae and Resistance (Jamaica)

Reggae is the heartbeat music of the Jamaican people. This distinctive style, which originated in the 1960s from the harsh urban spaces of Kingston, the capital, can now be heard in varied forms around the world. It has served as a potent medium for Jamaican and other social movements.

Leading up to Jamaica's independence in 1962, there was active experimentation with new popular cultural forms. This music genre emerged mainly from the urban working class and from rural, poor, city migrants. This loose resistance and survival movement brought together all those who felt the full brunt of the declining economic conditions that were the legacy of more than three centuries of British colonial rule.

The classic reggae anthem Rivers of Babylon (1972) best symbolizes these struggles and emerging anticolonial worldview. It was adapted from Psalm 137 and remains an enduring medium of lyrical resistance, with a haunting baseline message played on African drums by the celebrated group Count Ossie and the Mystic Revelation of Rastafari.

The anticolonial and religious overtones of the Rastafari reflected in it presaged the combative lyrical content that was to become the social movement's soundtrack throughout Jamaica's early decades of independence.

Jamaican music's journey has four interrelated but distinct forms that dominated specific periods. The first is the pre-and post-independence dance craze called ska (circa 19601966). The rocksteady era followed (19661968), giving way to the more sustained and dominant form of reggae that emerged in about 1969 and has lasted through the current era. Then came dancehall, which started in approximately 1983. Despite overlaps, continuities, and shared meaning, each form conveyed its own mood and message.