reggae

UK/ˈɹɛɡeɪ/US/ˈɹɛɡeɪ/

nounB2+Occasional — familiar, but not everyday · #8,456 of 15,258leans written

Reggae is a Jamaican style with the accent on the off-beat. Play reggae, a reggae band, reggae rhythms.

The emphasis lands where a rock beat does not, which is what gives it the pull, and the bass carries the tune more than the guitar does. It grew out of ska and rocksteady in the late 1960s and was added to the UNESCO heritage list in 2018.

Definitions of reggae

1nounreggaeA Jamaican style with the accent on the off-beat.B2+
“Bob Marley made reggae famous all over the world.”

reggae is a musical style.

Where it comes from

From a Jamaican word, first used in the 1960s for a dance and then for the music; the further origin is uncertain.

jam
rege — rags; a quarrel
English, today
reggae

From jam rege (“rags; a quarrel”), see rag; originally used in the 1960s to describe a Jamaican dance. Compare ragtime. Broader musical sense popularized by the 1968 Maytals song “Do the Reggay”.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in Music & Instruments

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reggae in the wild

The soundtrack helped to make reggae widely known.
Jimmy Cliff
Dub is a musical style that grew out of reggae in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
Dub music
During 1970 and 1971, Wailer, Marley and Tosh worked with renowned reggae producers Leslie Kong and Lee "Scratch" Perry.
Bob Marley and the Wailers
The campaign primarily focused on dancehall and reggae genre, with artists such as Buju Banton, Bounty Killer, and the Bobo Ashanti Rastafarians Sizzla and Capleton being targeted.
Stop Murder Music
Throughout his career, Matisyahu has worked with Bill Laswell and reggae producers Sly & Robbie and Kool Kojak.
Matisyahu

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From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

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