Jamaica owns Reggae and Dancehall

Jamaica is the only country in the world that owns two genres of music, undisputed. Reggae and Dancehall have been Jamaica's brilliant contributions to the world of music. It is also arguable that Reggae and/or Dancehall influenced Rap, Reggaeton , and other genres.

Reggae

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.

Dancehall

Dancehall is a type of Jamaican popular music which developed around 1979, with exponents such as Yellowman, Super Cat, and Buju Banton. It is also known by some as "Bashment".

The style is characterized by a deejay singing and rapping or toasting over raw and danceable music riddims. The rhythm in dancehall is much faster than in reggae, sometimes with drum machines replacing acoustic sets . In the early years of dancehall, some found its lyrics crude and bawdy ("slack"), particularly because of its sexual tones, singing style, and homophobia, though it became very popular among youths in Jamaica. Like its reggae predecessor it eventually made inroads onto the world music scene.

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