Great reggae selection including reggae greats Peter Tosh, Jimmy Cliff, Joe Higgs and others.

In the USA

If music is the universal language, then reggae is its most widely spoken dialect. The irresistible offbeat shuffle and bouncing bass lines have earned fans around the globe, and there is practically no corner on Earth that has not been influenced by this Jamaican music style. Reggae's syncopated beat fits well with most other musical styles and countless artists around the world have incorporated it into their music. While reggae has an engaging beat you can dance to, the music alone is not the sole reason for its worldwide popularity. Reggae has also long been a tool for social and political discourse.

The surprising tracks on World Reggae blend the upbeat and soulful groove of reggae with exotic local influences from Africa, Europe, South America, Asia and the Arab world to create new variations that will appeal to music lovers everywhere.

In the USA

In the USA

Jamaican mento!

In the USA

This compilation plays like a breathless epic through the sounds of the English, French, and Spanish-speaking Caribbean, pointing out along the way the vivid signs of a much larger, more complex series of musical dynamics than colorfully garbed natives warbling a Harry Belafonte ditty to the twinkling melodies of a steel drum. In its sweep, this set takes in the Dominican Republic's tonados, salves, and work songs still heard in factories today; Haiti's vodu and merengue; and, in Jamaica, the tambu drumming heard only in Trelawny parish, call-and-response digging songs, and mento, the Jamaican form of Calypso that eventually evolved into reggae. Rich and immensely varied, Caribbean music is always rooted in African polyrhythms and call-and-response singing. Yet, as this collection suggests, from work songs all the way up to the most polished modern studio productions, its greatest pleasures are found in its many and varied conflations of Europe and Africa, the African roots that sprout exotic mutants of ancient European ballads, lullabies, and quadrilles. --Elena Oumano

In the USA

In the USA

Trenchtown in the '60s was home to more stars than Hollywood, and they all passed through the gates of Studio One, the seminal and legendary Kingston, Jamaica, recording studio. This exquisitely remastered volume in Heartbeat's landmark Studio One series brings together the finest singing and instrumental talent to come out of that blessed isle. The Wailers (Bob Marley, Peter Tosh, Bunny "Wailer" Livingston) are joined here by Bob Andy (second only to Marley as a songwriter); Ken Boothe (still among Jamaica's vocal elite); Jackie Opel, first lady of reggae; Marcia Griffiths; and others. The Studio One stable of jazz musicians who backed them--including the late saxophonist Roland Alphonso and guitar legend Ernest Ranglin--were responsible for creating that blend of New Orleans R&B and mento (a Jamaican folk music akin to calypso) known as ska, and oversaw its development into rock steady, and, finally, in the early '70s, into reggae. Many of those same musicians would soon unite for one astonishingly prolific year as the Skatalites. Almost all the singers, captured here in the raw and thrilling infancy of their careers, went on to international stardom. --Elena Oumano

In the USA

In the USA

In the USA

In the USA