Musical Emissary Hailed as the “most charismatic emissary of modern Pan-Africanism”, by Timothy White in his book, Catch a Fire: The Life of Bob Marley, distinguished international Reggae artiste, the Hon. Robert Nesta Marley, more popularly known as Bob Marley, is regarded as one of the greatest musical legends of our time. Proclaimed and accepted worldwide as the ‘King of...

Freddie McGregor is one of reggae's most durable and soulful singers, with an incredibly steady career that started all the way back in the '60s when he was just seven years old. Since then, he's spanned nearly every stylistic shift in Jamaican music, from ska and rocksteady to Rastafarian roots reggae to lovers rock (his particular specialty) to dabbling in...

John Kenneth Holt (born 11 July 1947 in Kingston, Jamaica; died 19 October 2014 in London, England) was a reggae singer and songwriter who first found fame as a member of the Paragons before establishing himself as a solo artist. Amongst the songs he wrote was "The Tide Is High" (later made famous by Blondie and also covered by Atomic Kitten). On an island renowned...

Bunny Wailer (born as Neville Livingston on 10 April 1947 in Kingston, Jamaica-2 March 2021) was a three-time Grammy Award winner, singer, percussionist and devoted Rastafarian, known for the reggae classic Dreamland. He is founding member of reggae group The Wailers with Bob Marley and Peter Tosh. Bunny, Marley's step brother, toured with the band in England and USA after the success with the...

One of Jamaica's most beloved vocalists who was as pertinent in dancehalls as he was in bedrooms, Gregory Isaacs' career stretched over 30 years. From the heady days of reggae through lovers rock, a genre he virtually invented, his talent reached into the modern age. Born in the Fletcher's Land area of Kingston, Jamaica, on July 15, 1951, Isaacs arrived...

Peter Tosh, original name Winston Hubert McIntosh, (born October 19, 1944, Grange Hill, Jamaica—died September 11, 1987, Kingston), Jamaican singer-songwriter and a founding member of the Wailers, a popular reggae band of the 1960s and early 1970s. Tosh, Bob Marley, and Bunny Wailer formed the Wailers in 1963 in the Kingston ghetto of Trench Town. In addition to his rich baritone, Tosh brought to the Wailers his versatile musicianship...

Rocksteady is a music genre that originated in Jamaica around 1966. A successor of ska and a precursor to reggae, rocksteady was the dominant style of music in Jamaica for nearly two years, performed by many of the artists who helped establish reggae, including harmony groups such as the Techniques, the Paragons, the Heptones and the Gaylads; soulful singers such as Alton Ellis, Delroy Wilson, Bob Andy, Ken Boothe and Phyllis Dillon; musicians such as Jackie Mittoo, Lynn Taitt and Tommy...

Dub is an electronic musical style that grew out of reggae in the late 1960s and early 1970s. It is commonly considered a subgenre of reggae, though it has developed to extend beyond that style. Generally, dub consists of remixes of existing recordings created by significantly manipulating the original, usually through the removal of vocal parts, the application of studio effects such as echo and reverb, emphasis of the rhythm section (the stripped-down drum-and-bass...

Dancehall music, also called ragga or dub, style of Jamaican popular music that had its genesis in the political turbulence of the late 1970s and became Jamaica’s dominant music in the 1980s and ’90s. Central to dancehall is the deejay, who raps, or “toasts,” over a prerecorded rhythm track (bass guitar and drums), or “dub.” The seductive chant of the dancehall deejay—part talking, part singing—came to prominence in the late 1970s but dates...

Soca music is a genre of music defined by Lord Shorty, its inventor, as the "Soul of Calypso", which has influences of African and East Indian rhythms. It was originally spelt "sokah" by its inventor but through an error in a local newspaper when reporting on the new music it was erroneously spelt "soca"; Lord Shorty confirmed the error but chose to leave...