Reggae.

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Reggae is a music genre developed in Jamaica in the late 1960s.

The term reggae is sometimes used in a broad sense to refer to most types of Jamaican music, including ska, rocksteady and dub. The term is more specifically used to indicate a particular style that originated after the development of rocksteady. In this sense, reggae includes two sub-genres: roots reggae (the original reggae) and dancehall reggae, which originated in the late 1970s. Reggae is founded upon a rhythm style characterized by regular chops on the back beat, known as the skank. The beat is generally slower than that found in reggae's precursors, ska and rocksteady. Reggae is often associated with the Rastafari movement, which influenced many prominent reggae musicians in the 1970s and 1980s. However, reggae songs lyrics also deal with many other subjects, including love, sexuality and broad social commentary.

Reggae's origins can be found in traditional African and Caribbean music, as well as Rhythm and blues of the United States. Ska and rocksteady are 1960s precursors of reggae. In 1963, Jackie Mittoo, pianist with the ska band The Skatalites was asked to run sessions and compose original music by record producer Coxsone Dodd at his Studio One recording studio. Mittoo, with the help of drummer Lloyd Knibbs, turned the traditional ska beat into reggae, by slowing down the rhythm. Bob Marley, who helped popularize reggae worldwide, recorded ska, rocksteady, and nyabinghi-drumming records early in his career. By the late 1960s, reggae was getting radio play in the United Kingdom on John Peel's radio show.

It is thought that the word reggae was first used by the ska band Toots and the Maytals, in the title of their 1968 hit Do the Reggay. Other theories say the term came from the word streggae, a Jamaican slang term for prostitute, or that it originated from the term Regga, which was a Bantu-speaking tribe from Lake Tanganyika.