Reggae
Jamaican popular music — offbeat guitar, heavy bass, slow swing
Related
Reggae is Jamaican popular music that took shape in the late 1960s: slower tempo, heavy drums and bass, guitar and keys playing short offbeat "skank" chords, vocals often carrying social and spiritual themes.
It belongs to the same lineage as ska and rocksteady: ska is faster and springier, rocksteady slower, reggae slower still with a heavier bass. The usual mistake is to think reggae is just slow songs — the point is not speed but offbeat accent and a foregrounded bass.
Read deeper → ska
Sources
- 雷鬼的节奏特征与牙买加音乐谱系，参 The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, "Reggae"；本文为原创表述
Used for fact-checking only; all prose is original.