Musics of Jamaica

When one evokes the musics of Jamaica , the name of Reggae seems almost a Métonymie. But to approach this only kind does not make it possible to traverse all the horizon of the musical forms which were born in Jamaica.

The Ethnomusicologie or the Sociologie of the music found in the island a privileged ground of study. If the context caraïbéen and long time had a major influence on the popular musics which were born in the island, the own history of Jamaica and its people played a central role in the development of musical forms of a large variety.

In the Caribbean context

If the musical expressions jamaïcaines know a great specificity, they are also, as recalled by Isabelle Leymarie, full members of the family of the musics caribéennes. Familiarity of the rate/rhythm S, the topics but more especially, history and heritages divided as can the being slavery and the colonial background. Thus, the musics jamaïcaines are marked by an apparent duality between the musics of the colonist and the musics of the slaves. However, in the first times of the European colonization, a relative community of rates/rhythms between Africans and Europeans seems to have existed.

Popular musics and Carnival

cultelles Musics and ritual

Historical panorama

Mento and Steel drum

Ska

The ska - musical genre indicated by the Onomatopoeia which characterizes it - was carrying the hopes and the doubts of the community jamaïcaine to leaving the colonial period, period of the seizure of power by the Jamaica Labor Party . Mix Mento as well as other local musical forms, of American Jazz and of Rythm and blues, the ska seems a merry and enthusiastic musical form first of all. But an attentive listening of its polyrhytmic pulsations reveals that it is also carrying the deaf anger of the western districts of Kingston, where reign the chronic Chômage and violence of gangs and the rival political groups. Thus, one finds there messages protesters or the traditional messages of the popular songs close to the Calypso.

Sound system

Rocksteady and early reggae

Reggae explosion

Roots

" Everything crash landing "

On the international scene

Various branches and evolutions of the reggae

Raggamuffin

Dancehall, digital and hiphop

Jazz jamaicain and other meetings

Some great figures

Bibliography and sources

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