“Reggae” comes from the term “rege-rege” which means “rags” or “ragged clothes”, and this gives you your first clue into the story behind reggae music. When it started out in Jamaica around the late 1960s, reggae music was considered a rag-tag, hodge-podge of other musical styles, namely Jamaican Mento and contemporary Jamaican Ska music, along with American jazz and rhythm & blues, something like what was coming out of New Orleans at the time. Most listeners didn’t even distinguish reggae from Jamaican dancehall music or the slowed down version of ska music known as Rocksteady, until possibly when the band Toots and the Maytals came along. There songs served as a sort of public notice that a new style of music had been born and was staking its claim on the musical frontier.
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