Reggae
Reggae is a music genre first developed in Jamaica in the late 1960s. While sometimes used in a broader sense to refer to most types of Jamaican music, the term reggae more properly denotes a particular music style that originated following on the development of ska and rocksteady. |
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Reggae is based on a rhythmic style characterized by accents on the off-beat, known as the skank. Reggae is normally slower than ska but faster than rocksteady. Reggae usually accents the second and fourth beat in each bar, with the rhythm guitar also either emphasising the third beat or holding the chord on the second beat until the fourth is played. It is mainly this "third beat", its speed and the use of complex bass lines that differentiated reggae from rocksteady, although later styles incorporated these innovations separately.  |
FAMOUS REGGAE ARTISTS -BOB MARLEY -GREGORY ISAACS -DENNIS BROWN -KOOL HERC -ROBBIE SHAKESPEARE (PICTURE BELOW ON LEFT) 
Reggae is either played in 4/4 time or swing time, because the symmetrical rhythmic pattern does not lend itself to other time signatures such as 3/4 time. Harmonically, the music is often very simple, and sometimes a whole song will have no more than one or two chords. These simple repetitive chord structures add to reggae's sometimes hypnotic effects |
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