Reggae genres
Mento is a Jamaican folk music based on traditions brought to Jamaica by West African slaves which blended with later influences such as the quadrille.
[1][2] Mento reached its peak of popularity in the 1950s with the success of acts such as Louise Bennett, Count Lasher, Lord Flea, Laurel Aitken, and Harry Belafonte, but is sometimes confused with calypso, a similar style from Trinidad.
[4] Many of ska's popular acts such as Desmond Dekker & the Aces, Bob Marley and the Wailers, the Skatalites, Toots & the Maytals, Byron Lee & the Dragonaires, and the Melodians, later became associated with reggae.
[6] A successor of ska and a precursor to reggae, rocksteady was performed by Jamaican vocal harmony groups such as the Gaylads, Toots & the Maytals, the Heptones and the Paragons.
One of the developments which separated early reggae from rocksteady was the "bubble" organ pattern, a percussive style of playing that showcased the eighth-note subdivision within the groove.
The guitar "skanks" on the second and fourth beat of the bar began to be replaced by a strumming pattern similar to mento and the so-called double chop that can be heard so audibly in the introduction of Bob Marley's "Stir It Up" was developed during this time.
Cover versions of Motown, Stax and Atlantic Records soul songs remained popular in early reggae, often helping Jamaican artists gain a foothold in foreign markets such as the UK.
Roots reggae, in this descriptive sense, can be typified by lyrics grounded in the Rastafarian movement's "Back to Africa" message, equation of colonialism and slavery with the Biblical captivity in Babylon, and, of course, the belief in one living God, Jah, manifested as Ethiopia's Emperor Haile Selassie.
The roots sound can be best identified in the Jamaican recordings of the late 1970s by artists such as Burning Spear, Max Romeo, The Abyssinians, Culture and Israel Vibration.
"Rub-a-Dub" is the term for the style of reggae in a more specific era from the late 1970s to the mid 1980s, and ruled but not limited to one band, the Roots Radics.
Toasting is a style of talking over music, making heavy use of rhythmic phrasing and rhyme patterns, that was developed in the 1950s by Jamaican disc jockeys looking to add excitement to the mainly American R&B records they played in outdoor venues, called "lawns", and dancehalls.
This style finally gained chart topping popularity in the late 1960s with deejays such as U-Roy and Dennis Alcapone scoring numerous hits.
This style of speaking over records may have had a great impact on a young Jamaican DJ named Kool Herc, who had emigrated to New York City in the late 1960s where he began holding parties in the Bronx.
The style is characterized by a deejay singing and rapping over riddims and was originally developed in the sound system culture in the wake of the increased popularity of early pioneers like Big Youth.
An important characteristic of dancehall was the role of the selectors (and later operators) on the sound systems, who would routinely use the volume control on their mixers to remix the riddim around the vocalists rhythmic patterns.
Ragga (or raggamuffin) is usually used to refer to the type of dancehall music that emerged since the 1980s which is based almost entirely around these "mix" rhythms and contains almost no elements of what is traditionally perceived as reggae.
Emerging from the roots of Jamaican sound system culture, ReggaeEDM evolved as artists experimented with combining the soulful grooves of reggae and dub with modern electronic production.
Other notable artist who have influenced the emerging genre include Thievery Corporation, Adrian Sherwood, Asian Dub Foundation, and Major Lazer.
