Reggae Music: How Jamaica Conquered the World! (Part One)

This is part one of a two-part focus on Reggae music.

The heart of Reggae music has always been politics and spirituality. 

In this two part episode, you'll learn about some of the musical and political forces in Jamaica's colorful past that all contributed to the music that we celebrate as reggae today.   From Marcus Garvey, the modern-day prophet who  had a vision for the black people living in the new world, and Ethiopia's Emperor Hailie Salassie, whose formal title included "Lord of Lord, King of Kings, and Conquering Lion of Judah", and claimed to be a direct descendant of King Solomon and the Queen of Shebah, to great early reggae musicians like Derrick Morgan, and Desmond Dekker, to the firey Peter Tosh, and the brilliant reggae, who brought reggae to the rest of the world, Bob Marley - they're all here and you'll learn their stories, hear their music, and understand the major forces that fused to create a brand new genre.

In this latest episode of American Song, you'll see how a tiny Spanish colony developed to become Jamaica as we know it today, and how Reggae was instrumental in helping Jamaican culture 'conquer the world'!

In This Episode

Paul Simon - Mother and Child Reunion
The Flying Lizards - Money (That's What I Want)
Bob Marley  - Redemption Song
Bob Marley and the Walers - 400 Years
Burning Spear - Slavery Days
Sly Mongoose - Count Lasher
The Folkes Brothers - Oh Carolina
Toots and the Maytals - 54-46 Was My Number
Marcus Garvey (Political Speech)
Derek Morgan -  Forward March
Ernest Ranglin - Below the Bassline
Derrick Morgan - Tougher than Though (Rudie's in Court)
Desmond Dekker - 007 Shantytown
Desmond Dekker - Israelites
Stephen Marley (with Ziggy Marley) - Selassie is the Chapel
Peter Tosh - Let Jah be Praised
Culture - Behold
Sonjah Stanley - (Academic discussion)
Third World - 96 Degrees in the Shade
Peter Tosh - African
The Skatalites - The Guns of Navarrone
Mutabaruka - (Jamaican Poet; Dis Poem)
Bob Marley and the Wailers - No Woman, No Cry
Peter Tosh - Steppin' Razor
Burning Spear - Lion

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Transcript

I.               History of Jamaica

That’s the opening verse and chorus to Redemption Song, one of the last songs Bob Marley ever recorded.  In the first verse, Marley was looking backwards, into the legacy of African slavery in the new world.  And in the very next verse, as if so to say “that was the past, but this is the present”, he encourages his people to embrace a new, stronger and more positive mindset, even under the threat of nuclear war.  

Welcome to episode four, season three of the American Song podcast.  Reggae music is our theme this month.  And you might be asking yourself why, since Reggae sprang from Jamaica, it’s part of the American Song story.  Well, Reggae has a lot in common with other genres we’ve been exploring all along.  First, it has common roots with American music.  Reggae sprang from the blending of African and European music.  It’s based on African polyrhythms, and call and response patterns.  Like gospel, R&B, soul, the blues, and rock, it was heavily influenced by jazz in the earliest days.  Like these genres, reggae came from earlier forms of Jamaican popular music,  such as mento,  ska and rocksteady.  And just as R&B and soul were used to carry important social messages during the fight for social justice and civil rights in America, Reggae is also a deeply political as well as spiritual form of music.  These are a few of the ideas we’re going to explore in today’s podcast.  I hope you’ll it as interesting as I do!  Today’s episode is Reggae Music: How Jamaica Conquered the World!

To make sense of Reggae, it might help to take a dip in the turbulent waters of Jamaican history.  As in America’s own story, it’s harsh; a long and brutal period of slavery, followed by social injustice, oppression, and poverty for millions of Jamaican blacks.

The Spanish were the first to colonize Jamaica.  Prior to their arrival, the Taino first nation were a peaceful people who lived in harmony with nature. Skilled farmers and fishermen, they lived in villages and were governed by caciques, or chiefs.  They enjoyed a rich culture, filled with art, music and dance. Their complex religion centered on the worship of zemis, or spirits, who, they believed, protected them and brought them abundance. 

So, of course, the Spanish were driven by a burning desire to put a stop to all that.

The Spanish colonists enslaved the Taino, forcing them to work in the mines and sugar plantations they built on the island.  In the first 50 years of Spanish rule, about 90% of the Taino died from overwork, disease, starvation and suicide.   Having transformed Jamaica into one gigantic cemetary, the Spanish were left with a real dilemma.  I mean, for sure, they weren’t about to get their hands dirty, grubbing around in the sugar fields or digging for shiny rocks under miles of ground.  

So, with only a few thousand Taino left, the Spanish began to import slaves from Africa in the early 16th century.  By the time the British took control in 1655, there were already over 10,000 enslaved Africans living there.  By the time slavery was ended in Jamaica, in 1838, 89% of the island’s population were slaves – over 300,000 people.  As in America, slaves were critical to the local economy; in this case it was sugar cane.  In today’s American dollars, Jamaica was producing $38MM worth every year, on the backs of slaves.  This amounted to 10% of Britain’s economy at the time.  That sounds huge, until you realize that at the start of the American Civil War, slave grown cotton made up 30% of America’s GDP.  

Like cotton was to the South, Jamaica’s sugar became the backbone of the Jamaican economy in the 17th and 18th centuries.  Just like in the American South, slavery meant a life of extreme hardship where Africans and their descendants were forced to work long hours in dangerous conditions, under constant physical as well as sexual abuse. One in five Jamaican slaves died every year as a result of these conditions.  

Also like in the South, emancipation didn’t bring full equality either.  Most former slaves continued to just barely survive, facing discrimination in all areas of life.  

Think about this; post-slavery, Jamaican blacks could not:

Vote: The voting requirements were set so high that only the tiny minority of white landowners could vote – I mean, democracy IS about full representation, right? 

Own land: In an agricultural economy like Jamaica still has you really need to own your own farm if you’re going to succeed.  So of course, the former slaves were prohibited from owning any.

Get an education:  Education is the way forward, so better not provide any public education for former slaves.  Anyway, doing that makes it much easier to point fingers and talk about the ignorant and lazy blacks who don’t have jobs – which is what happened. 

Receive equal treatment under the law:  With all the unfairness, you might worry that some blacks might get the testify against the rule makers.  Better not allow them to do that.

Form trade unions:  Unions didn’t exist in Jamaica for 80 years after emancipation.  Former slaves could not collectively bargain for better wages or working conditions.

Own businesses: Former slaves were usually denied loans and didn’t receive other financial assistance, so no capital to start businesses.

Travel freely: Like in the pre-Civil War South, and as in apartheid South Africa, former slaves needed a pass to travel outside of their parish. 

After abolition in Jamaica, slavery continued in everything but ‘name’.  

The heart of Reggae music has always been politics and spirituality.  Like a modern-day, old testament prophet, Marcus Garvey had a vision for the black people living in the new world.  Born in 1887, in St. Ann’s Bay, Jamaica, Garvey was a major promoter of Black self-determination.  His memory has become really important in Reggae because he prophesied the arrival of a Black king from the East who would be their salvation.  That prophecy seemed to come true in 1930.

This was when Ras Tafari Makonnen a young Ethiopian nobleman, became the Emperor of Ethiopia. It seemed to confirm Garvey’s prophetic vision.  Ras Tafari Makonnen became His Imperial Majesty, Emperor Haile Selassie I, King of Kings, Lord of Lords, Conquering Lion of the Tribe of Judah. The first Rastafari preachers took the Emperor’s original name as their own—pointing to the titles in Scriptures that identified him as the Second Coming.  The New King James version of Revelation 5:5 says 

“And one of the elders said to me, "Do not weep. Behold, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has prevailed to open the scroll and to loose its seven seals."

The new Ethiopian emperor was claiming to be none other than the Second Coming of Jesus Christ.  In this light, the blacks in the New World were “exiles” in a modern-day Babylon.  Their redemption required the development of a consciousness that would liberate Black people from the “mental slavery” the result of enslavement and Eurocentric miseducation about Africa and its peoples.

Decades later, roots reggae music would carry that message with anthems praising the divinity of the Emperor, recalling the historic struggles of the Jamaican people, and pointing an angry finger at the ongoing injustices that continued in Jamaican society.  

Second Half of Bob Marley’s Redemption Song Here

This painful past and the impact of the Rastafarian religion have inspired many of the lyrics in Reggae’s greatest songs, launched a musical revolution.  A few examples include

Peter Tosh’s “400 Years”   (excerpt)

Burning Spear’s “Slavery Days” (excerpt)

When Emperor Selassie I visited Jamaica in April of 1966, he was greeted by a massive crowd of over 100,000 people at Palisadoes Airport in Kingston.  His visit was a huge inspiration to Jamaica’s struggling blacks and he carried an important message with him.  Speaking at the University of the West Indies, he spoke about the importance of black self-determination and

when he visited a local Rastafarian community, he was greeted as a living god.

II.             Roots of Reggae

Sly Mongoose

While reggae is Jamaica’s  best known music, other forms came before it.

In the 1940s and 1950s, Mento—kind of a Jamaican folk music – was really popular.  Mento fused African percussion such as rumba boxes, bongos – with slavery-era chanting – and European guitars and American banjo sounds thrown into the mix.  The lyrics were full of double meaning, like in this song, Sly Mongoose,  by Count Lasher.  

Sly Mongoose

Sly mongoose, sly mongoose,

You're a real cool customer.

You slip into Bedward's daughter's room,

And you slip her a dollar and a quarter.

Sly mongoose, sly mongoose,

You're a real cool customer.

You slip into Bedward's room,

And you play with his daughter's garter.

These lyrics need a little interpretation.

The farmer – that’s Jamaica’s wealthy land-owners.  The mongoose was a stand-in for the more cunning working poor in Jamaica, who are usually taken advantage of by the wealthy. And Bedward, in the lyric Bedward’s kitchen, was a Jamaican religious leader from the late 1800’s/ early 1900’s who said he had ‘miraculous healing powers’.  

Stealing into his righteous kitchen to steal a chicken might have meant that the trickster mongoose was going stealing converts out of Bedward’s church.

Oh Carolina

This is an early ska song from 1960 by the Folkes Brothers and their legendary drummer, Count Ozzie, called "Oh Carolina”.   When American R&B reached Jamaica,  Ska was the natural result and it made a big impact.  ”   It’s a little like what happened when the blues reached England in the ‘50s, via English merchant sailors in the years just after the war, only in that case, Skiffle was the result.  Go back and listen to episodes 8 and 9  in season two if you’d like to learn more. 

Anyway, instead of the American Blues, as in Skiffle, Ska was the child of Afro-Caribbean and American R&B.  It’s a unique sound blending off-beat rhythms, blaring horns, piano, heavy guitar, and fast drum rhythms. 

54-46 Was My Number

Some important ska musicians eventually became reggae artists, including the Wailers, Bob Marley, Peter Tosh and Bunny Wailer, Ernie Ranglin, Prince Buster, Derrick Morgan and Toots and the Maytals.  It’s their song we’re listening to now, called 54-46 Was My Number.  

Count Ozzie, who we heard in Oh Carolina a moment ago, brought Rastafari drum patterns into ska.  This meant a lot to black Jamaican singers.  They felt that the Rastafari “riddims” were a tribute and honor to Africa, and the music didn’t feel the same when they listened to American R&B.  Groups like the Skatalites also introduced Rastafari themes.  Two of their songs “Tribute to Marcus Garvey” and “Reincarnation” are super examples of this.  Here’s a little from “Tribute to Marcus Garvey” by the Skatalites. 

“Forward March”

After WW II, England began shedding its colonies like huskies blow their coats in springtime.  Finally, in 1962, it was Jamaica’s turn.  After QE II passed,  I remember reading social media comments from people living in Jamaica.  Let’s just say that, as a representative of their former oppressor, the Queen wasn’t as beloved as she was in other places.  

A new feeling of hope and excitement that things were changing for the better was sweeping across Jamaica and  a new sound was needed.  You can hear that whoop of optimism in this song, “Forward March”, by the artist Derek Morgan.  Ska met the moment perfectly!  The overwhelming majority of Jamaicans, who had really suffered the most under the colonial system believed that their hopes and dreams for better wages, and improved living standards were right around the next corner!

A story on National Public Radio's World Café, talks about Ernest Ranglin.  A jazz player at heart who acknowledged Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie as two of his main inspirations,  Ranglin was also one of the central musicians in the creation of Ska.   According to the NPR story, "Ranglin was the one who turned the beat around and invented ska, the building block of reggae and all Jamaican music that has followed." 

Ranglin himself agreed, when interviewed by Guitar World magazine, he said, "I invented the music, but not the word. And even reggae—I didn't invent that word either, but I invented the music."

The development of the sound system was another important milestone on the path to reggae. Basically, sound-systems were early DJ set ups; mobile speakers with turntables and amplifiers, used to provide the music for big public dance parties.  These dances opened up Jamaican society by creating the opportunity for Jamaican teens to mix across class lines.  

Tougher Than Tough (Rudie’s in Court) Derrick Morgan

Five years went by between independence, as mirrored in the rise of Ska, and then to the next big movement in Jamaican music.  But after five years of independence and no real economic improvement for Jamaica’s blacks, optimism flagged.  So now it’s 1966/ 67.  The disappointment in the air was so thick, you could almost cut it with a. knife, like some big block of rancid cheese.  Jamaica was filled with major strikes and ghetto violence.  

Like before, Jamaica’s music kept pace with the nation’s changing vibe.  A new music reflecting how people were feeling was called for.  The answer was Rocksteady.  It was a musical attempt to create stability in a world that felt like it was shaking apart.  Derrick Morgan is one of the contenders among different producers and musicians that claimed to be  the first to record a rocksteady record.  This is Morgan’s song, Tougher Than Tough (Rudie’s in Court).  

Other possible firsts are Roy Shirley’s cut,  “Hold Them”, from 1966, and Alton Ellis’s recording of  “Girl I’ve Got a Date”.  

007 Shantytown

The Rocksteady beat is slower than Ska’s, and the music is more stripped down.  The emphasis is on drums, bass, and social commentary. You’ll hear Jamaican folk proverbs in it like “If you no know, ask” and “Every little ting mek a ladder”.  and biblical imagery that pull from Exodus, the Psalms, and the Book of Revelation.  Other songs referenced “rude boys”—armed urban gangs, carrying knives and guns, and willing to use them to confront social injustices.  This song,  007 Shanty Town by Desmond Dekker and the Aces from 1967 celebrated rude boy culture, reaching number one in Jamaica and number four in the UK Singles Charts. 

Enter Reggae

Israelites
Proper Reggae finally arrived in 1968.  As a musical form, it stayed true to the basic rhythms that came before it.  With the syncopated snare drum and hi-hat pulse of ska, the swaying guitar and bass interplay of rocksteady, and even mento’s more African influence could still be felt in the music, including Nyahbinghi (nyah-bing-gee ) drumming tradition with the heavy beats on two and four.  Nyahbinghi itself, was influenced by drumming styles from the Asante people of Ghana, and two native Jamaican drumming styles, Burru and Kumina drumming.  So, Rocksteady is a mash-up of different genres, traditional African and Caribbean.  It’s also got Jazz, R&B, and rock, and what are these genres themselves, if not African-influenced?  Obviously, Reggae also draws from Mento, Ska and Rocksteady.

This song, “Israelites”, by Desmond Dekker is an early reggae classic from 1968.  With all the proper trappings of Jamican culture we’ve been talking about, Dekker refers to his Black community as the “true” Israelites, enslaved in a modern-day Babylon, longing for deliverance by the righteous God in Zion who knew their hearts and heard their cries.  Very Rastafarian!

And here’s another reason why Selassie’s visit to Jamaica was so important to Reggae.  Before the so-called Lion of Judah visited Jamaica in 1966, the Rasta movement had never been taken seriously.  But during that trip, the Emperor awarded gold medals to thirteen Rastafari leaders for their Pan-African works and commitments.  With this single action, he gave the movement international recognition and legitimacy.  He transformed Rastafarians from “outcast cultists” into the champions of Jamaica’s African heritage.  Rastafarians, with their unique way of speaking and dressing, the dread locks they wore in their hair and the new music they listened to,  were placed under the bright spotlight of the world stage.  The Rastafari have celebrated Selassie’s speech every year since April 21, 1966, naming it “Grounation Day.”

This is why there have been so many reggae songs that celebrate Selassie.  A few of these songs include 

Bob Marley’s  “Selassie Is the Chapel, this was Bob’s first-ever Reggae song.  In it, he celebrates Selassie as Christ returned.  From a musical perspective, the song foreshadows a technique that we’ve seen many times in Hip Hop; using older instrumental tracks and creating new songs on top of them.  In this case, Marley used Elvis’s song ‘Crying at the Chapel’.

“Let Jah Be Praised” by Peter Tosh – Even though Tosh originally wrote the song as a member of the Wailers, he only released it on his first solo album, Legalize It.  Tosh originally wanted to call the song Igziabeher (ih-JEE-zee-bay-HER), which means God.  The suits at the record company kind of scratched their heads, and suggested, “Jeez Peter, why don’t you come up with a name that people can actually read and pronounce?”  So he changed the title. 

and “Behold” by Culture - Joseph Hill, Culture’s lead singer, wrote the song about a vision he’d had while walking in the mountains.  Apparently, he heard a voice say "Behold, I come quickly." Not seeing anyone around, and fresh out of the holy herb that is Ganja, he decided it must have been a warning from God about the end times.  Hill’s lyrics are about the importance of living righteously, and preparing for judgement day. “Behold” has a strong message about social justice, and ending oppression and exploitation.

Beyond it’s spiritual nature, Reggae is also the defiant voice of Africans living in an African diaspora.  Bob Marley put it really well in the opening lines of his song, “One Drop” where he sings:

“Now feel this drumbeat, as it beats within

Beating a rhythm, resisting against the system

We know that Jah won’t let us down

When you’re right, you’re right!”

Sonjah Stanley, is Director of the Caribbean and Reggae Studies Unit at the University of the West Indies.  She has said that “Reggae has gone to all parts of the world inspiring people because of the very soul of the music and that soul has to do with an entire history of hardship, of oppression, of rebellion, [and] of enslavement.”   The purpose of Reggae is the “chanting down” of the oppressive system of Babylon. 

This song, “96 Degrees in the Shade” , by Third World is about The Morant Bay Rebellion.   The story of this rebellion goes like this: 

In October, 1865, a group of black Jamaicans marched on the local courthouse of Morant Bay, Jamaica.  Their cause was the unfair treatment of black people by the colonial authorities. Things got violent, and the courthouse was burned down.  Soon, violence involving thousands of Black Jamaicans erupted across the entire island. The local British authorities, directed by the very uptight and  pretty unenlightened governor,  Edward John Eyre, marched in to brutally squash the rebellion.  Hundreds of Black Jamaicans were killed.  As if to say, ‘I’ll show you who’s boss’, Eyre then suspended Jamaica’s constitution and imposed martial law.  Surprisingly, back in Jolly Old England, the governor’s bosses heard about what had happened and were bloody unhappy about how matters were handled.  Eyre resigned.

So, there were a lot of Reggae songs that linked past and present and promoted the resistance movement.  The point was to stress and reclaim Black history and culture.  

Another great Bob Marley song, “Rastaman Live Up” maked the point crystal clear. 

Rastaman, live up!

Bongoman, don’t give up!

Congoman, live up, yeah!

Binghi-man don’t give up!

Keep your culture

Don’t be afraid of the vulture!

Grow your dreadlocks

Don’t be afraid of the wolf-pack!

Because the issues were the same in so many countries, Reggae became the most popular music in the Third World. In a Jamaican interview she gave in the 1990’s, Winnie Mandela looked back on Bob Marley’s work and said that reggae songs like these were popular in South Africa, Angola, and Mozambique and that they were a source of moral support to African freedom fighters.  Songs like “Zimbabwe”, and “M.P.L.A.” (Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola) or Peter Tosh’s “Apartheid” were rallying cries.

Marley’s anthem “Africa Unite” and Peter Tosh’s reggae anthem “African”

are good examples of songs that tried to unite Blacks across the African diaspora with continental Africans.  Lyrics’s in Tosh’s song, African include:

Don’t care where you come from

As long as you’re a Black man, you’re an African

No mind your nationality

You have got the identity 

of an African

Let’s shift gears again and talk about the start of the Jamaican record labels.

Roll On Sweet Don

Hedley Jones was a kind of a Renaiisance man, born in 1917 in Jamaica.  You couldn’t ask of a better background than what he brought to Jamaican music. 

A guitar player, an inventor with a deep interest in electronics – which was brand new at the time – and an audio engineer, Hedley was the catalyst for a lof what happened in Jamaican music..  He actually invented one of the first solid body electric guitars, several years ahead of Les Paul.  When WWII came, he shipped off to fight for England, but went back home after the war.  When he did, he noticed that there wasn’t much music going on, not like what he’d experienced in Europe.  As an early Jamaican DJ, Monte Blake, described it much later, "in those days, there was no Jamaican music." 

Popular music generally came into Jamiaca from Latin America, Cuba, or the United States.

So, here’s Jones, with all this natural talent and ideal skills, basically just waiting for the window of opportunity to open.  Jones owned a radio repair shop and he started to sell the American jazz, blues and R&B records that had already started showing up, obviously brought home by the soldiers and sailors after the war. In order to pull more customers in, Hedley created a sound system that could crank the music loud enough to reach out into the streets and outdoor markets - the natural evening hangouts.  Even with all the local interest in American records, the local Jamaican radio stations were slow to change their programming.  Besides Jones, a few other people became sound system operators - essentially DJs.  There was Duke Reid, Prince Buster, and Coxsone Dodd who had booths or tents out in the markets, and they sold records, food and even alcohol from those booths!  While Jones was the first one to see an opportunity, it’s Dodd that had the big vision.

Like Jones, Dodd had an early and lasting fascination with sound systems.  For a while, Dodd lived in the American South, working in the sugar cane fields.  That’s where he got the opportunity to purchase records that were unknown in Jamaica.  Eventually, he acquired a major collection of jazz records by guys like Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, and Coleman Hawkins.  We talked about all of these important jazz artists in ____________________, and if you haven’t already heard it, I’m inviting you to go back and check it out!  

Dodd eventually went back home to Jamaica, where his mother had a liquor store.  In those days, liquor stores were a lot like pubs, so people gathered there to socialize.  He became a DJ and he saw an opportunity to attract a bigger crowd by adding songs and artists that no one else was playing, and his jazz collection was perfect.  Maybe some of you listeners around  LA remember the early days of KROQ, right in the beginning of New Wave – in the late. ‘70s and early ‘80s.  The ROQ, with DJs like Rodney Bingeheimer, was the only station early on to play the B-52s, Gary Numan, OMD and all those other bands.  Anyway, I imagine the music scene in Jamaica to be something like those days!

In addition to playing records, Dodd started featuring local musicians. As Dodd, himself, put it, 

"I decided to make some local recordings of my own for the sound system. When I started, I didn't realize it could be a commercial business to the extent I'd sell my own records."  Eventually, this became Studio One, the first black-owned recording studio in Jamaica.

A Love I Can Feel (John Holt; Studio One)

While Dodd was really an innovator, he’d have had a pretty short career without a steady supply of talented musicians.  Enter Sister Mary Ignatius Davies, born in Kingston, and head of the Alpha School for Girls and the Alpha Boys' School.  Sister Davies became – to use a pun – ‘instrumental’.  The Alpha Schools were trade schools that also taught music.  Originally, the focus was on traditional brass band arrangements, but Sister Davies was a jazzer with a huge collection of jazz and blues records and she changed the curriculum to a jazz focus.  Most of the greatest ska and reggae artists have mentioned her as their greatest inspiration.

This is another example where what happened in Jamaica looked a lot like what also happened, very separately, in America.  Whereas Motown had its own musicians, the Funk Brothers, and the LA recording scene had the Wrecking Crew, Dodd’s Studio One employed many of the students from the Alpha Boys School. They appeared on dozens of Studio One recordings and some of them formed bands.  One such band was The Skatelites, one of the most popular Jamaican groups of the early sixties.  This is one of the Skatelites biggest hits, The Guns of Navarrone.

These Studio One sessions became the foundation not only for ska, but for rocksteady and reggae as well and were responsible for many of the great milestones in reggae today. Desmond Dekker, Bob Marley, and Bunny Wailer were all Alpha students.  So did the great trombonist, Rico Rodriguez.  All the members of the Skatalites were Alpha School for Boys alumnae as well! 

Nothing else sounds like Reggae.  Its sound comes from a number of different sources.  

For instance, the prominent basslines

In reggae, the bass drives the song and is front and center.  Check out the song “Pressure Drop” by the Maytals and you’ll get what I’m talking about!

Reggae guitar playing has a much softer edge than rock does, and the techniques are different. .  One of these, skanking, is where notes are kept very short (staccato).  Muted notes in various chords are also common; you get this by not pressing the strings all the way down to the fretboard, strumming on the offbeat (opposite to the drums and bass), and playing mostly on the higher strings to avoid clashing with the keyboardist.

Although not as much as in ska, reggae does still feature horn riffs from time to time, using trombones, saxes, and trumpets.  

The use of Patois Poetry – Jamaicans speak a kind of pigeon English that’s influenced by French, Portuguese, different West African languages, and English.  This patois was the voice of reggae in the high watermark years that lasted through the 1980’s.  Here’s an example of Patois Poetry by the famous Jamaican poet, Mutabaruka.

Percussion wise, Reggae draws from a much wider palette of instruments than traditional rock where the power comes from masterful drummers like the late Neil Peart.  Many of the drums in Reggae have African origins.  I’m talking about congas, bongos and wood blocks, quiccas, shekeres and djembes blocks.  Being that the Spanish were there early on Latin instruments like claves.  There are three basic rhythmic styles; 

One Drop – With One Drop, every third beat is accented with the bass drum and a rim-shot on a snare.  It’s a repetitive drumming technique, heavy on the hi-hat to keep it steady.  This classic Bob Marley song, No Woman No Cry is a pretty great example.

Now, this Peter Tosh song, Steppin’ Razor, is a “Rocker”.  It’s got the same basic structure as One Drop, only it doubles-up on the bass drum.  So you’ve got a heavier, harder beat.

While One Drops mainly uses the hi-hat, and Rockers are heavy on bass drum, they’re both stressing the three.  Steppers, also heavy on bass drum, are four-on-the-floor type songs.  Every single beat is important and you’ve got a heavier, rockier reggae happening.  Check out this Burning Spear song, Lion.  A killer example of the stepper style.