Reggae

Reggae is a music genre first developed in Jamaica in the late 1960s. While sometimes used in a broader sense to refer to most types of Jamaican music, the term reggae more properly denotes aparticular music style that originated following on the development of ska and rocksteady.

Reggae is based on a rhythmic style characterized by accents on the off-beat, known as the skank. Reggae isnormally slower than both ska and rocksteady.[1] Reggae usually accents the second and fourth beat in each bar, with the rhythm guitar also either emphasizing the third beat or holding the chord on thesecond beat until the fourth is played. It is mainly this "third beat", its speed and the use of complex bass lines that differentiated reggae from rocksteady, although later styles incorporated theseinnovations separately.

The 1967 edition of the Dictionary of Jamaican English lists reggae as "a recently estab. sp. for rege", as in rege-rege, a word that can mean either "rags, ragged clothing"or "a quarrel, a row".[2] Reggae as a musical term first appeared in print with the 1968 rocksteady hit "Do the Reggay" by The Maytals, but it was already being used in Kingston, Jamaica as the name ofa slower dance and style of rocksteady.[3] Reggae artist Derrick Morgan stated:

We didn't like the name rock steady, so I tried a different version of 'Fat Man'. It changed the beat again, it usedthe organ to creep. Bunny Lee, the producer, liked that. He created the sound with the organ and the rhythm guitar. It sounded like 'reggae, reggae' and that name just took off. Bunny Lee startedusing the world [sic] and soon all the musicians were saying 'reggae, reggae, reggae'.[3]

Reggae historian Steve Barrow credits Clancy Eccles with altering the Jamaican patois word streggae (loosewoman) into reggae.[3] However, Toots Hibbert said:

There's a word we used to use in Jamaica called 'streggae'. If a girl is walking and the guys look at her and say 'Man, she's streggae' it means...