Jamaican music’s planet wide popularity is surely one of the late 20^th century’s most intriguing cultural phenomena. For reggae may be the only music not of European or North American origin which can be heard in every country on earth, and is arguably the first example in modern times of a non-western nation exporting its culture around the globe.

This universal appeal may partly be language based. For English is the de facto universal language of our age and small as it is, Jamaica is the world's most populous predominantly non-white, solely English speaking country. But it is still startling that an island with a mere 2.5 million people should be more musically influential than the rest of the 5.5 billion strong non-western world.

Now while reggae is a generic name for all Jamaican popular music since 1960, it can also refer to the particular beat that was popular here from about 1969 to 1983. A lot of foreigners, and many older Jamaicans, consider today’s dominant form of Jamaican popular music – the mike chanting deejay style called  ‘dancehall’ - a corruption of ‘real‘ reggae. But attitude this makes no sense. For reggae is nothing more or less than popular music created by Jamaicans to satisfy their spiritual and emotional needs.

Names and styles may have changed over the years - mento, ska, rocksteady, reggae, roots, dub, lover’s rock, dancehall, ragga - but the tradition in which Jamaican music is created and enjoyed has not. Reggae is not and never was designed to suit a specific formula or espouse a given political view. Nor was it thrust upon the masses by slick corporate hype or central planning committees. Reggae has grown directly out of the experiences of Jamaican people and all discussions must begin there.

Indeed not even in their wildest ganja induced fantasies could Jamaican music pioneers have dreamt that the music they were making would one day be listened to all over the planet. For as late as 1962 the Jamaican recording industry consisted mainly of touristy mento songs and American rhythm and blues covers.

R&b was originally brought to Jamaica from the southern USA by returning migrant sugar cane cutters in the late 1940s and was primarily disseminated by sound systems, the large mobile discotheques that functioned as giant community record players in the inner city. In the late 1950s however American r&b changed into rock and roll, which Jamaican dance crowds didn’t like. Business declined as the r&b supply dried up, so sound system operators tried recording their own songs.

Early local record producers merely wanted to reproduce the American r&b sound dancers demanded, and made no conscious effort to create a definably Jamaican style. So how did these hesitant imitations develop into a new musical form? As one musicologist puts it - ’Unless we hypothesize the existence of a vibrant - but almost completely undocumented - Afro-Jamaican folk music culture running parallel to the mainstream urban popular music, the rise of distinctive indigenous Jamaican forms in the 1960s remains inexplicable.'

One such element was the Rastafarian religion, which embraced Africa at a time when American black music was completely ignoring it. So while part of the population was listening to Miami and New Orleans, Rastas were urging Jamaicans to hold on to their cultural roots. This has always been a key dynamic in Jamaican music.

One extraordinary aspect of Jamaican music has been its ability to continually re-invent itself. While many indigenous musics have remained relatively unchanged over time, reggae encompasses everything from ska to roots to dub to dancehall. And remarkably almost every new Jamaican sound has been hugely influential overseas.

Ska’s popularity has made it an accepted music genre of itself, with North America and Europe boasting hundreds of ska bands. Bob Marley made roots reggae globally known. While the drum and bass dub created by King Tubby and Lee Perry helped to transform club dance music everywhere. Dancehall

music gave birth to American rap and hip hop, which indisputably began as an American version of Jamaican deejay chanting.

Yet while new developments significant enough to warrant name changes were once a regular occurrence in Jamaican music, there has been no new coinage since dancehall in 1983. Some see this as a sign of stagnation, and wonder if American mass pop culture, as in so many other places, is overwhelming indigenous music in Jamaica.

For the most important influence on Jamaican music over the past decade has probably been cable television, which since 1992 has pumped dozens of American channels into virtually every Jamaican household. Ten years ago rap music had almost no following in Jamaica, but channels like Black Entertainment Television have garnered it massive popularity among Jamaican teenagers. Big name Jamaican artistes like Beenie Man and Bounty Killa have even started doing ‘crossover’ combination songs with US rap artists and the Jamaican deejay style is to some extent starting to resemble hip hop. Some wonder if Shaggy’s ‘Hot Shot’, the world’s biggest selling album in 2001, can be classified as reggae.

Yet this is far from the only trend in reggae. Many recent big local hits have rhythms based on old Jamaican mento and pocomania beats. And the Rastafarian influence remains strong, with hard core militants such as Capleton and Sizzla continuing to chant “fire burn” lyrics while gentler locksmen like Luciano and Abijan croon of God and love. Even ‘dub’ or spoken word dialect poets like Mutabaruka are getting regular airplay. All in all those Jamaica cultural roots that have created and sustained reggae for four decades still seem rather strong.

So while Jamaican music has changed considerably over the past 40 years, in a way it has stayed the same – confidently open to outside influences and ever alive to societal change, but filtering everything through a unique sensibility that combines ‘the rhythm of Africa and the melody of Europe’.