Roots Archives Forum

Can anyone put a date to the Birth of Reggae?

Most people will cite 1968, others 1967 as when reggae was first heard. In and around that time anyway, there is no precise birthdate the same way a person has.

Musical changes are usually gradual, and not "eureka" moments like when a baby is born. People were playing the style before it had a name.

So really, reggae was never "born", it "evolved". Anyway, that's the Darwinist thought, Creationists may feel differently

Thanks Davek

I'm definitively with Davek, not a "creationist" when it comes to musical styles.
Music evolves, is not a creation. Same as languages that evolve for decades (centuries) and they remain in a continuum of evolution...music too. The similarity with philology is uncanny (or maybe is my own personal interest in both disciplines!)

When did Jazz started? or Soul, or Blues, or BeBob , or Flamenco, or Merengue, or Guaguancó, or Highlife, or Rock & Roll?
Different characteristics appear at different times and converge into something distinctive and "new" (well, not really but once a new name is invented, the music industry sells it as new)
Around the summer 68, some records produced in Jamaica started to have the shuffle organ bubbling, the 16th type of HiHat , the longer or double guitar chip alongside the piano ( and of course the one drop drumming, the booming melodic bassline and the picking guitar of the Rock Steady style)....and they started to call then Reggae ("Reggay")...instead of Rock Steady or Ska or whatever. For some reason the name stuck even if the music has been developing and changing since then every year. Many people ( most certainly you Don!) can tell the date of Reggae recordings by the type of arrangement and production. Is in continuous evolution...I'll leave for now if that evolution has been of any interest in the last decade(s)!

Well, that's my view anyway. There was no "birth".