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Jamaica’s original rural folk music, known as mento, may be the grandfather of reggae music and had substantial influences about the formation of that genre. Jamaica music was inspired by African and European music too as by American jazz and featured acoustic guitars, banjos, bamboo saxes, hand drums and marimbula (large thumb pianos) also called rhumba boxes, which were large enough to sit on and play. There were also a range of hand percussion instruments like maracas. Mento’s vocals had a distinctly African sound and also the lyrics had been nearly usually humorous and pleased. Everywhere individuals gathered you could discover a mento band and there were many mento and calypso competitions throughout the island. Mento also gave birth to Jamaica’s recording industry within the 1950s when it first became accessible on 78 RPM data. Mento is still around today.

Before Globe War II, calypso from Trinidad and Tobago experienced made its way into Jamaica’s music and, although very different, the two were frequently confused. Jamaica’s personal calypso artists performed alongside its mento artists all through the island, for locals and tourists alike. A calypso craze swept the U.S. and U.K. in the late 1950s as Harry Belafonte came onto the scene. Many of his songs had been really mento but they had been a lot more often described as calypso.

After the war, transistor radios and jukeboxes experienced turn out to be widely available and Jamaicans had been in a position to hear music from the southern U.S., especially jazz and rhythm and blues from a few of the greats like Fats Domino and Jelly Roll Morton, and data flooded into the island.

After which, in the early 1960s, came American R&B. With a faster and far a lot more danceable tempo, the genre caught on quickly in Jamaica. Attempting to copy this sound with local artists, Jamaicans added their own unique twists, blending in elements of their Caribbean heritage, fusing it with mento and calypso and jazz, to produce a distinctive genre heavily driven by drums and bass and accented with rhythms about the off-beat, or the “upstroke”. This purely Jamaican style dominated the Jamaican music scene at the time and was known as … ska.

Ska

Coinciding with the joyful mood within the air when Jamaica won its independence from the U.K. in 1962, ska experienced a type of 12-bar rhythm and blues framework; the guitar accented the second and fourth beats within the bar, essentially flipping the R&B shuffle beat, and gave rise to this new sound.

Because Jamaica didn’t ratify the Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works until 1994, Jamaican musicians frequently created instrumental ska versions of music by popular American and British artists; copyright infringement was not an issue! The Skatalites re-made Motown hits, surf music and even the Beatles in their personal style. The Wailers’ first single Simmer Down was a ska smash in Jamaica in late 1963/early 1964 but they also covered And I Love Her by the Beatles and Like a Rolling Stone by Bob Dylan.

Although the sound system concept had taken root in Jamaica within the mid 1950s, ska led to its explosion in popularity and it became a major, uniquely Jamaican, industry that continues to thrive today. Enterprising DJs with U.S. sources for the latest records would load up pickup trucks with a generator, turntables, and huge speakers, and drive close to the island blaring out the latest hits. Essentially these sound systems had been like loud mobile discos! DJs charged admission and sold food and alcohol, enabling them to profit in Jamaican’s unstable economy. Many would at times assemble and sound systems became huge business, as well as Jamaica dancehall music. Amongst fierce competition, Clement “Coxsone” Dodd and Duke Reid surfaced as two of the star DJs with the day. Reliant on a steady source of new music, these two superstars began to produce their personal records, ultimately becoming Studio One (Dodd) and Treasure Isle (Reid).

Other important ska producers were Prince Buster, whose Blue Beat label records inspired numerous Jamaican ska (and later reggae) artists, and Edward Seaga, who owned and operated the West Indies Records Limited (WIRL) in the 1960s but went on to turn out to be Prime Minister of Jamaica and leader with the Jamaican Labour Party within the 1980s.

As Jamaicans emigrated in large numbers to the U.K., the sound system culture followed and became firmly entrenched there. Without the efforts of a white Anglo-Jamaican named Chris Blackwell, the rest of the world might not have come to know this Jamaican brand of music. Blackwell, a record distributor, moved his label to the U.K. in 1962 and began releasing data there on various labels, including the Island label. His early artists included the Skatalites, Jimmy Cliff and Bob Marley. Blackwell’s international breakthrough arrived in 1964 when his artist Millie Small hit the U.S. airwaves with My Boy Lollipop.

Back in Jamaica, as American R&B and soul music became slower and smoother in the mid-1960s, ska changed its sound and evolved into… rocksteady.

Rocksteady

Songs that described dances had been very popular now within the U.S. and U.K, too as Jamaica. In the U.S., we had The Twist, The Locomotion, The Hanky Panky and the Mashed Potato. One popular dance-song in Jamaica was The Rock Steady by Alton Ellis. The name for this entire genre may have been based on that song title.

The only noteworthy difference between ska and rocksteady was the tempo. Both styles had the famous Jamaican rhythm guitar complemented by drums, bass, horns, vocals and a groove that kept you on your feet moving, but the drum and bass are played at a slower, a lot more relaxed, pace and the rhythm is a lot more syncopated.

Rocksteady came about at the time when Jamaica’s poverty-stricken youths experienced turn out to be disillusioned about their futures after Jamaica gained independence from Britain. Turning into delinquents, these unruly youths became known as “rude boys”. Rocksteady’s themes mainly dealt with love and the rude boy culture, and had catchy dance moves which had been far more energetic than the earlier ska dance moves. Many bass lines originally created for rocksteady songs continue to be used in today’s Jamaican music.

As a musical style, rocksteady was short-lived, and existed for only about two years. A few of the more well-known rocksteady artists were Alton Ellis, Justin Hinds and also the Dominos, Derrick Morgan, The Gaylads, The Kingstonians, Delroy Wilson, Bob Andy, Ken Boothe, The Maytals and the Paragons.

Continuing to evolve, Jamaica’s musical tempo slowed, bass patterns became a lot more complex, and the piano gave way to the electric organ, giving birth to… reggae, which eventually became the most well-liked music genre within the world. It is now easy to get Jamaica music download these days.

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