Reggae is a type of national pop music. The roots of reggae come from Jamaican folk music and rhythm and blues. The fusion of these two directions appeared in the sixties of the twentieth century, then Jamaican musicians in their own manner reproduced the New Orleans rhythm and blues heard on the radio.
Reggae - lifestyle
Currently, the word "reggae" means not only this original, interesting music, but also a kind of worldview. Rastafarianism became the religion of reggae musicians. According to the prediction, Ras Tafari Makkonen (the ruler of Ethiopia, after whom the new religion was named) was to free all the suffering, save them from "Babylon" and return them to their homeland in Africa to spiritual and ethnic roots.
In Rastafarianism, the ideal is universal brotherhood, which must be achieved spiritually, not revolutionary. The herb of wisdom, better known as marijuana, became the way to gain spiritual enlightenment for most Rastamans, it is believed that it first grew on the grave of the wisest of kings - Solomon.
Rastamans can be easily identified by their preferred colors (a combination of yellow, green and red) and pigtails-dreadlocks, which serve as antennas to the spirit world, a way of communicating with their god.
The predecessor of the musical style of reggae is ska, from which a new direction borrowed a characteristic rhythm and a set of instruments. However, ska turned out to be too fast for the relaxed Rastafarians, so they significantly slowed down the tempo of the music, made the rhythm more whimsical and fickle. The right rhythm is the basis of reggae music, because it is he who should transmit a positive vibration to the world.
Basics of musical style
Reggae is a very diverse musical style. Within its framework, an unsophisticated, deliberately simplified folk variety and an extremely complex, smoothed pop variety coexist. The classic and king of reggae was and still is Bob Marley, who made his music the quintessence of all the hopes of rastamans. His melodies were peaceful, danceable, unusual, but at the same time carried a powerful political and social charge that called on humanity to return to its origins.
Despite the fact that Bob Marley died in the early eighties of the last century, his records continue to come out, and many of them have never been released before. Rastamans consider Marley a prophet, without belittling his musical and poetic talents, they endow him with almost divine properties.
One of the modern trends in the development of reggae is dub poetry. Its inventor was Linton Kwezi, he was the first to invent the monotonous recitation of complex poetic texts to sophisticated reggae rhythms.
