Reggae for Jamaicans means more than just another musical phenomenon. It’s the body and soul of a people grateful to Robert Nesta Marley, the man who left them an emblematic musical work with a universal and legendary scope. Since an early age, the songwriter and singer strived to recreate, together with his band the Wailin’ Wailers the people’s musical language in an ingenious way. Reggae’s birth is the result of an evolution within Jamaica’s folk music of the 19th Century stemming from the ska, a Rhythm & Blue’s antithesis born in the Kingston neighborhoods with some riffs from American music. This rhythm was enriched by means of the mento, a style that harks back to the old parties held by slaves in the Jamaican plantations and that was all the rage in the entire country in the 1950s. The influence exerted by the raftafari movement, whose philosophy is unmistakably linked to African origins, was the key ingredient in reggae’s creation by taking in a range of instruments and rhythmic patterns that used to be played in the old plantations. Enlightened by rock steady, a soul-and-blues charged genre that made people go crazy back in the 60s, the talented songwriter had the hang of putting together all these styles until he plucked out the I-can’t-help-but-dancing reggae. This has undoubtedly made him go down in the world’s musical history. Regardless of Marley’s death in 1981, reggae was inherited by his people’s cultural heritage as an omnipresent rhythm, very sensitive to the coming of new elements showcased in the international musical spectrum.Just walk your way into the Spanish Town downtown area, or past populous Kingston, or into any city in the country, and you’d surely hear a rhythm that’s here to stay in Caribbean culture. Bob Marley and his reggae are here, too. Even during funeral services and ceremonies, reggae is played because people dance inspired in the idea that their dead are going to meet their own ancestors. Other musical styles and rhythms are Soca, calypso and dancehall. Well-known actor and singer Harry Belafonte, born in Jamaica, was the nation’s top calypso player, though this particular rhythm hails from Trinidad. In the 1990s, a new breed of Caribbean singers and crooners has popped up. A case in point is Jamaican act Buju Banton.
