Western Music - A Short History

by James L. Zychowicz

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Music in the Western Culture is the result of various influences, including the formalization of improvised traditions; the growth of notation; the development of tuning systems; the treatment of text; innovative approaches to form; the role of patronage; the absorption of various cultures into the style; the growth of technology; investigations of performance practice; and various other factors.

Western music also benefits from various dualities: sacred and secular traditions; monophonic and polyphonic textures; conservative and progressive tendencies; popularism and elitism; canon and non-canonic works; and other polarities. The western tradition is complicated by these various influences and perspectives, and formal musicological study often becomes a point of departure for other, more individualized investigations of music.

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The western tradition of music has its origins in the chant tradition of the early Christian era. The monophonic music of chant dominated the middle ages, and included the composition of sequences and tropes. In the high middle ages, organum emerged, thus introducing polyphonic textures into liturgical music. By the thirteenth century, the motet became a seminal polyphonic composition and included liturgical and secular texts as well as a chant cantus firmus. In the Ars Nova of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, secular music was composed polyphonically, and resulted in elaborate contrapuntal devices and notational practices.

In the fifteenth century the early Renaissance polyphony showed evidence of a new style influenced on fauxbourdon and based on previously improvised traditions. At this time textures grew from a reliance on lower voices to treble-dominated textures. Renaissance motets and madrigals have their origins in the music of the Netherlands composers (Obrecht, Ockeghem, Busnois, Binchois) and the idiom culminates in the work of Josquin Desprez. With the late Renaissance, more national and secular music emerged, as found with the English madrigal and the French chanson.

The late sixteenth-century music included attempts to return to Greek drama. The latter resulted in the formulation of monody for declaiming music which was at the core of early opera (Caccini, Peri) and became a vehicle for composers like Monteverdi to take forward the nascent genre of opera. Italian opera (opera seria, opera buffa) soon dominated the early baroque style of the seventeenth century, which extended to the composition of oratorios on sacred subjects. In France opera soon took root, and a national style evolved starting with Lully.

In the seventeenth_century instrumental music developed on its own, treble_dominated texture of vocal music was supported by the basso continuo tradition of accompaniment. Works for instruments included keyboard suites (Froberger, Kerll) and sonatas, organ music (Frescobaldi), including various partitas and fugues, and trio sonatas (Corelli, et al.) for various combinations of instruments. Music for orchestra included sinfonias and concertos, including the concerto grosso.

The high baroque music of the eighteenth century was dominated by the genius of Bach and Handel. Bach composed music for almost every genre except opera; he left a corpus of liturgical music, including cantatas, that show the influence of the Reformation on musical style. Handel, as a German- born composer who studied in Italy and worked many years in England, shows the international aspects of the baroque style. Like Bach, he wrote in almost every genre, including opera seria and oratorio.

While Bach and Handel yet composed, a style change was taking place in the early eighteenth century. Rococo preferences moved toward simpler harmonies and more transparent textures, as well as a tendency toward instrumental music (C.P.E. Bach, J.C. Bach, Joseph Haydn). Later in the century, the Classic style of Haydn and Mozart dominated the music of Western Europe, with the symphony, sonata, and string quartet predominating, and the sonata principle at the core of musical structure. The opera seria of Handel and his generation gave way to opera buffa, as found with Mozart and others. The bel canto tradition in opera seria metamorphosed with Mozart and emerged later in the operas of Rossini, Donizetti and Bellini.

The classical style may be seen to culminate in the music of Beethoven, who is perceived as the link between the classic and romantic style. This distinction is important for the so-called common practice era from ca. 1725 to 1900, that is the period of the defining tradition of western music. Beethoven contributed to almost every genre of music at the time, including piano sonata, string quartet, and symphony. He expanded the symphony with regard to form, orchestration, texture, and aesthetics, contributing programmatic elements to an otherwise self-contained style.

As the link to the romantic era that dominated the nineteenth century, Beethoven is a point of departure for many of the trends that existed in the era. The so-called Romantic style includes the growth of a number of varied and often antithetical influences. These include the development of the symphony as a genre; program music and the ideal of absolute music; grand opera; lieder; character pieces for piano; the piano sonata; national musical style; and the expansion of tonality and harmonic practice. The early Romantic composers include Schubert, Weber, Berlioz, Mendelssohn, Schumann, and Chopin; among the later ones are Liszt, Wagner, Brahms, and Verdi.

With Wagner romantic opera expanded in terms of the orchestra, the scope of subject matter, the demands on voices, and the overall length. As a controversial figure, Wagner influenced the musical establishment, such that affinities were aligned with him and the music of the future, or with more conservative trends that reached back to Beethoven. Wagner's harmonic and timbral idiom was critical for the late romantic efflorescence at the end of the century that led to the so_called end of tonality as it was generally understood in the nineteenth century.

With Wagner, the dominance of the Austro-German tradition in nineteenth-century music became apparent. The extended harmonic and formal practices of Mahler, Richard Strauss, Schönberg, and others preceded the freer treatment of dissonance in the twelve-tone music of the New Viennese School of Schönberg, Berg, and Webern. At the same time, the Impressionism of the French composers Debussy and Ravel were based on non-functional harmonic principles. Composers like Bartók introduced folk elements into music.

Twentieth-century music includes many different styles and tendencies, including

• neoclassicism (Stravinsky);
• expressionism (Berg, Webern);
• serialism (Boulez);
• electronic music (Stockhausen);
• aleatoric music and indeterminacy (Cage); and
• minimalism (Reich, Glass).

At the same time, the rediscovery of the past has resulted in an explosion of interest in the authentic music of past cultures. Similarly, the eclecticism of twentieth-century culture touches upon the growth of ethnomusicology and the perspectives it offers to studies of more traditional western music.

The Foundations of Punk Rock

The beginnings of punk rock are often furiously debated. This is partially because everyone has different definition of punk rock, and partially because its foundation stones are found in several places.

"Punk Rock" was originally used to describe the garage musicians of the '60's. Bands like the Sonics were starting up and playing out with no musical or vocal instruction, and often limited skill. Because they didn't know the rules of music, they were able to break the rules.

The mid to late '60s saw the appearance of the Stooges and the MC5 in Detroit. They were raw, crude and often political. Their concerts were often violent affairs, and they were opening the eyes of the music world.

The Velvet Underground is the next piece in the puzzle. The Velvet Underground, managed by Andy Warhol, were producing music that often bordered on noise. They were expanding the definitions of music without even realizing it.

The final primary influence is found in the foundations of Glam Rock. Artists like David Bowie and the New York Dolls were dressing outrageously, living extravagantly and producing loud trashy rock and roll. Glam would end up splitting up its influence, doling out portions to hard rock, "hair metal" and punk rock.

New York: The First Punk Rock Scene

The first concrete punk rock scene appeared in the mid '70s in New York. Bands like The Ramones, Wayne County, Johnny Thunders and the Heartbreakers, Blondie and the Talking Heads were playing regularly in the Bowery District, most notably at CBGB.

The bands were unified by their location, camaraderie, and shared musical influences. They would all go on to develop their own styles and many would shift away from punk rock.

While the New York scene was reaching its heyday, punk was undergoing a separate creation story in London.

Meanwhile, Across the Pond

England's punk scene had political and economic roots. The economy in the United Kingdom was in poor shape, and unemployment rates were at an all-time high. England's youth were angry, rebellious and out of work. They had strong opinions and a lot of free time.

This is where the beginnings of punk fashion as we know it emerged, and they centered out of one shop. The shop was simply called SEX, and it was owned by Malcolm McClaren.

Malcolm McClaren had recently returned to London from the U.S., where he had unsuccessfully tried to reinvent the New York Dolls to sell his clothing. He was determined to do it again, but this time looked to the youths who worked and hung out in his shop to be his next project. This project would become the Sex Pistols, and they would develop a large following very quickly.

Enter The Bromley Contingent

Among the fans of the Sex Pistols was an outrageous bunch of young punks known as the Bromley Contingent. Named after the neighborhood they all came from, they were at the first Sex Pistols shows, and quickly realized they could do it themselves.

Within a year, the Bromleys had formed a large portion of the London Punk scene, including The Clash, The Slits, Siouxsie & the Banshees, Generation X (fronted by a young Billy Idol) and X-Ray Spex. The British punk scene was now in full swing.

The Punk Rock Explosion

By the late '70s, punk had finished its beginning and had emerged as a solid musical force. With its rise in popularity, punk began to split into numerous sub-genres. New musicians embraced the DIY movement and began to create their own individual scenes with specific sounds.

In order to better see the evolution of punk, check out all of the subgenres that punk split off into. It's a list that's constantly evolving, and it's only a matter of time before more categories appear.

pop music - History of pop music, Sound and themes

1890s through 1920s

The dance music element of pop music can be traced back to Ragtime, which was initially popular in African American communities, and mainly disseminated through sheet music and player pianos. The crossing of race-based social boundaries around race, for ragtime, swing, and later Rock’n’Roll, was the source of many moral panics inspired by pop music.

1930s and 1940s

Styles influencing the later development of pop include the Blues, also originating in African-American communities, (for example, electric guitar Blues in Chicago), and Country coming also from "hillbilly music" of poor folk, white and black (Sun Records in Tennessee), which blended to become early Rock and Roll.

=== 1700 Early Pop music artists include Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Bobby Darin, Bobbejaan Schoepen, and Peggy Lee, but other artists like Bill Haley and his Comets, Fats Domino and Elvis Presley became popular with the younger generation.

1960s

Pop music teen idols of the 1960s included Cliff Richard, Sandy Shaw, Lulu, The Rolling Stones, The Small Faces, Gene Pitney, and The Shadows.

1970s

A proliferation of new sounds from the disco era included the BeeGees and ABBA, the piano-based pop of Billy Joel and Elton John, the country stylings of the Eagles, and the rock-influenced pop of Rod Stewart, Steely Dan, and Fleetwood Mac. Other important pop musicians include Cat Stevens, The Carpenters, Jackson Five, The Miracles, Roberta Flack, Carly Simon, Cher, Stevie Wonder, Earth, Wind and Fire, KC and the Sunshine Band and Donna Summer.

1980s

Notable highlights for pop music in the 1980s are Michael Jackson's second Epic label release, Thriller, which went on to become the best-selling album of all time. Michael Jackson was sometimes referred to as "The King of Pop" and Madonna was considered "The Queen of Pop".

1990s

Among the most successful pop acts of the 1990s were R&B-influenced pop acts such as Mariah Carey, Boyz II Men, Celine Dion, Michael Bolton, En Vogue, Salt N Pepa, Brandy, and TLC.

2000s

In the 2000s, hip-hop blended in with lemar, paving the way for the multi-platinum successes of artists like Nelly, Eminem, 50 Cent, Ludacris, Ciara, Beyoncé Knowles, Justin Timberlake, Nelly Furtado, the Pussycat Dolls, Christina Aguilera, Gwen Stefani and especially Britney Spears are thought to be pop artists, but lack a key element, and therefore fall under the hip hop genre. Other trends included Teen pop acts such as Disney Channel star Hilary Duff and Lindsay Lohan, dance/pop/rock group Jump 5 being featured in various Disney and non-disney movie soundtracks (eg. Reggaeton style music such as Pitbull, and "pop punk" music, such as Avril Lavigne and Good Charlotte.

In the Arab world, familiar pop stars include Cheb Khaled, Cheb Mami and Samira Said (famous for her 2003 album Youm Wara Youm).

Sound and themes

Pop music generally uses a simple, memorable melody and may use stripped-down rhythms.

Music videos and live performances are often used for exposure in the media, and artists may have extravagant stage shows and use choreographed dancing.Pop followed by dancing

Read more: http://encyclopedia.stateuniversity.com/pages/17713/pop-music.html#ixzz0IlLqdBKL&C

The History of Rock 'N' Roll, Vol. 1

Episode 1: Rock 'n' Roll Explodes, 21 October 2005

Interestingly, in 1995, two 10 hour mini series about the history of Rock & Roll aired on television. One was this (produced by Time-Warner), and the other was PBS' "Rock & Roll". It is important to know that this is not the documentary that was aired on PBS. This is a lighter take on the history of rock & roll, focusing more on the entertainment aspect as opposed to the more "documentary" orientation of the series that aired on PBS.

This is the first of 10 part series on history of Rock n Roll. Each of the parts are arranged in chronological order and this episode deals with the very beginning of Rock n Roll from early '50s to mid '50s. All time early Rock n Roll greats like Little Richard, Chuck Berry, Jerry Lee Louis appears to show the formative years of Rock n Roll.

Rock music in the beginning was not widely accepted due to all of its players being of black ethnicity. Sam Phillips of Sun Records were recording black rock n roll musicians but couldn't break the barrier, until Elvis Presley walked in the door. Sam Phillips immediately knew that this was his ticket, and attached a band to Elvis to promote him as his star.

The first episode is based on these developments, as rock music gradually finds its way into mainstream America.

A brief summary of Jamaican music

Jamaica: the mento

TM, ®, Copyright © 2003 Piero Scaruffi All rights reserved.

(See Background: The 20th Century)

The first Jamaican recording studio opened in 1951 and recorded "mento" music, a fusion of European and African folk dance music. The island was awash in rhythm'n'blues records imported by the so called "sound systems", eccentric traveling dance-halls run by no less eccentric disc-jockeys such as Clement Dodd (the "Downbeat") and Duke Reid (the "Trojan"). The poor people of the Jamaican ghettos, who could not afford to hire a band for their parties, had to content themselves with these "sound systems". The "selectors", the Jamaican disc-jockeys who operated those sound systems, became the real entertainers. The selector would spin the records and would "toast" over them. The art of "toasting", that usually consisted in rhyming vocal patterns and soon evolved in social commentary, became as important as the music that was being played.

In 1954 Ken Khouri started Jamaica's first record label, "Federal Records". He inspired Reid and Dodd, who began to record local artists for their sound system. Towards the end of the 1950s, amateurs began to form bands that played Caribbean music and New Orleans' rhythm'n'blues, besides the local mento. This led to the "bluebeat" groups, which basically were Jamaica's version of the New Orleans sound. They usually featured saxophone, trumpet, trombone, piano, drums and bass.

Soon the bass became the dominant instrument, and the sound evolved into the "ska". The "ska" beat had actually been invented by Roscoe Gordon, a Memphis pianist, with No More Doggin' (1951). Ska songs boasted an upbeat tempo, a horn section, Afro-American vocal harmonies, jazzy riffs and staccato guitar notes.

Ska

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(See The Age of Revivals)

Theophilus Beckford cut the first "ska" record, Easy Snapping, in 1959, but Prince Buster (Cecil Campbell), owner of the sound system "Voice of the People", was the one who, around 1961, defined ska's somatic traits once and forever (he and his guitarist Jah Jerry).

The Wailers, featuring the young Bob Marley, Peter Tosh and Bunny Livingston, slowed down the beat in Simmer Down (1963). Millie Small's My Boy Lollipop (1964) was the first worldwide ska hit. The charismatic leaders of the ska movement were the Skatalites, a group of veteran ex-jazzmen led by saxophonist Tommy McCook and featuring virtuoso trombonist Don Drummond and tenor saxophonist Rolando Alphonso, that formally existed only between 1964 and 1965 (Ball O' Fire, 1965; Phoenix City, 1966; the instrumental Guns Of Navarone, 1967), but ska's star was Desmond Dekker (Dacres), whose Israelites (1968) launched the even faster "poppa-top", and whose 007 Shanty Town (1967) and Rude Boy Train fueled the mythology of the "rude boy". Ska music was relatively serene and optimist, a natural soundtrack to that age of peace and wealth, somewhat akin to the music of the "swinging London".

Jamaica had become an independent country in 1962, but social problems had multiplied. During the mid Sixties, ska music evolved into "rock steady", a languid style, named after Alton Ellis' hit Rock Steady (1966), that emphasized sociopolitical themes, adopted electric instruments, replaced the horns with the guitars, and promoted the bass to lead instrument (virtually obliterating the drums). In other words, ska mutated under the influence of soul music. Rock steady was identified with the crowd of young delinquents (the "rude boys") who mimicked the British "mods" and the American "punks". Its generational anthems were Judge Dread (1967) by Prince Buster, John Holt's The Tide Is High (1966) by the Paragons, Rivers Of Babylon (1969) by the Melodians. The music took the back seat to the vocal harmonies. This helped bring about the supremacy of vocal groups: Wailers, Paragons, Maytals (the new name of the Vikings of the ska hit Halleluja, 1963), Pioneers, Melodians, Heptones, etc.

Reggae

TM, ®, Copyright © 2003 Piero Scaruffi All rights reserved.

(See Re-alignment)

The word "reggae" was coined around 1960 in Jamaica to identify a "ragged" style of dance music, that still had its roots in New Orleans rhythm'n'blues. However, reggae soon acquired the lament-like style of chanting and emphasized the syncopated beat. It also made explicit the relationship with the underworld of the "Rastafarians" (adepts of a millenary African faith, revived Marcus Garvey who advocated a mass emigration back to Africa), both in the lyrics and in the appropriation of the African nyah-bingi drumming style (a style that mimicks the heartbeat with its pattern of "thump-thump, pause, thump-thump"). Compared with rock music, reggae music basically inverted the role of bass and guitar: the former was the lead, the latter beat the typical hiccupping pattern. The paradox of reggae, of course, is that this music "unique to Jamaica" is actually not Jamaican at all, having its foundations in the USA and Africa.

An independent label, Island, distributed Jamaican records in the UK throughout the 1960s, but reggae became popular in the UK only when Prince Buster's Al Capone (1967) started a brief "dance craze". Jamaican music was very much a ghetto phenomenon, associated with gang-style violence, but Jimmy Cliff's Wonderful World Beautiful People (1969) wed reggae with the "peace and love" philosophy of the hippies, an association that would not die away. In the USA, Neil Diamond's Red Red Wine (1967) was the first reggae hit by a pop musician. Shortly afterwards, Johnny Nash's Hold Me Tight (1968) propelled reggae onto the charts. Do The Reggay (1968) by Toots (Hibbert) And The Maytals was the record that gave the music its name. Fredrick Toots Hibbert's vocal style was actually closer to gospel, as proved by their other hits (54-46, 1967; Monkey Man, 1969; Pressure Drop, 1970).

A little noticed event would have far-reaching consequences: in 1967, the Jamaican disc-jockey Rudolph "Ruddy" Redwood had begun recording instrumental versions of reggae hits. The success of his dance club was entirely due to that idea. Duke Reid, who was now the owner of the Trojan label, was the first one to capitalize on the idea: he began releasing singles with two sides: the original song and, on the back, the instrumental remix. This phenomenon elevated the status of dozens of recording engineers.

Reggae music was mainly popularized by Bob Marley (1), first as the co-leader of the Wailers, the band that promoted the image of the urban guerrilla with Rude Boy (1966) and that cut the first album of reggae music, Best Of The Wailers (1970); and later as the political and religious (rasta) guru of the movement, a stance that would transform him into a star, particularly after his conversion to pop-soul melody with ballads such as Stir It Up (1972), I Shot The Sheriff (1973) and No Woman No Cry (1974).

Among the reggae vocal groups, the Abyssinians' Satta Massa Gana (1971) is representative of the mood of the era.

In 1972 reggae became a staple of western radio stations thanks to the film The Harder They Come.

Dub

TM, ®, Copyright © 2003 Piero Scaruffi All rights reserved.

More and more studio engineers were re-mixing B-sides of reggae 45 RPM singles, dropping out the vocals and emphasizing the instrumental texture of the song. The purpose was to allow disc-jockeys to "toast" over the record. Engineers became more and more skilled at refining the instrumental textures, especially when they began to employ sophisticated studio devices. Eventually, "dub" became an art on its own. The first dub singles appeared in 1971, but the man generally credited with "inventing" the genre is Osbourne Ruddock, better known as King Tubby (2), a recording engineer who in 1970 had accidentally discovered the appeal of stripping a song of its vocal track, and who engineered the first dub record, Carl Patterson's Psalm Of Dub (1971). When he got together with producer Lee "Scratch" Perry, Blackboard Jungle (1973) was born: the first stereo "dub" album. It was a Copernican revolution: the engineer and the producer had become more important than the composer. It also marked the terminal point of the "slowing down" of Jamaican music, a process that had led from ska to reggae to rock steady. Compared with the original, dub was like a slow-motion version. a collaboration with melodica player Augustus Pablo led to another seminal work, King Tubby Meets Rockers Uptown (1976).

Rainford Hugh Perry, better known as Lee "Scratch" Perry (3), who had nursed the Wailers, pretty much set the reference standard for generations to come with Double Seven (1974), the first reggae album that overdubbed synthesizers, Revolution Dub (1975) and Super Ape (1976), one of the genre's masterpieces.

Melodica virtuoso Augustus Pablo (2), aka Horace Swaby, penned the instrumental albums This Is Augustus Pablo (1973) and East of the River Nile (1977), two of the most atmospheric works of the genre.

Talk-over

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"Rapping" originated from the complementary tradition of the "talk-over". The disc-jockeys of the sound systems used to accompany the dance tracks with impromptu melodic and spoken-word vocals, often simply to add enthusiasm to the dance. This eventually became an art in itself. U-Roy (Edwart Beckford) was possibly the first great talk-over artist, the man who turned dub into a highly-effective vehicle for agit-prop messages (Dynamic Fashion Way, 1969; Runaway Girl, 1976; Wake the Town, Wear You to the Ball). Other pioneers of rapping were Dennis "Alcapone" Smith, with Forever Version (1971), Prince Jazzbo and I Roy. Big Youth (Manley Buchanan) upped the ante with his wild sociopolitical raps (S-90 Skank, 1972; The Killer, 1973; House Of Dread Locks, 1975; Every Nigger Is A Star, 1976), most effectively on Dreadlocks Dread (1975). Originally, the technique of these "toaster" consisted in remixing other people's songs, removing the original vocals, emphasizing the rhythmic base, and overdubbing their own rhyming stories on the resulting track.

The golden age of Reggae

TM, ®, Copyright © 2003 Piero Scaruffi All rights reserved.

As reggae became a world attraction, styles multiplied and inbred with the American genres.

Burning Spear (1), the project of Rastafarian visionary Winston Rodney, unleashed the supercharged Marcus Garvey (1976), perhaps the highest artistic achievements of reggae music.

Joseph Hill's vocal trio Culture were equally passionate, and the title-track from Two Sevens Clash (1977) became the anthem of the rasta-punks and coined "rockers reggae".

Ijahman Levi (Trevor Sutherland) was perhaps the most spiritual vocalist of his generation. His songs were religious hymns (Jah Heavy Lord, 1975; I'm A Levi, 1978; Are We A Warrior, 1978).

Ex-Wailers Peter Tosh, or Winston Hubert McIntosh, crossed over into rock territory with Legalize It (1976).

Other popular classics include Junior Marvin's Police And Thieves (1976) and Gregory Isaacs' Love Is Overdue (1974).

Jamaican revival in Britain

(See British Graffiti)

Reggae and ska enjoyed a major revival in Britain during the punk age. Starting in the mid-1970s, ensembles such as Aswad, Steel Pulse, Matumbi and UB40 offered a westernized version of Jamaican music that was rather uninspired, but were lucky enough that the audience found affinities with the implicit protest themes of the political punks. At the same time, British sensations of the ska revival included Specials and Madness. British dub music was a more serious affair, and took longer to emerge. But, over the long term, it was dub music, and not ska or reggae music, that stuck around, thanks to the quality productions of Adrian Sherwood (the brain behind African Headcharge, Dub Syndicate and New Age Steppers), Jah Shaka and prolific Guyana-born Neil Fraser, better known as Mad Professor, who penned Beyond the Realms Of Dub (1982), and even Aswad's own New Chapter of Dub (1982). Artistic peaks were reached by dub pioneer and experimentalist Keith Hudson, with Pick A Dub (1976), and instrumental soundpainter Dennis Bovell (a former member of Matumbi, an engineer who coined the soul-reggae fusion called "Lovers Rock"), with Strictly Dubwise (1978), I Wah Dub (1980), probably his most intense release, and Brain Damage (1981), a cosmopolitan work that also mixed calypso, rock and funk. Linton Kwesi Johnson, a Jamaican poet living in England, transposed reggae's mood into dub-based sermons, arranged by Dennis Bovell, on the contemporary issues of the lumperproletariat. Ditto for the other poet of dub, Mutabaruka. These dub poets were as musical as their producers managed to be. Kwesi owed a lot to Bovell.

Jamaican music in the 1980s

(See The New Age and World-music)

Vocal trio Black Uhuru, supported by the rhythm section of Sly Dunbar and Robbie Shakespeare, wrapped reggae and Rastafarianism into a slick production of drum-machines and synthesizers, especially on Red (1981).

Third World offered a commercial fusion of reggae, funk and soul.

Innovators of the next generation included toaster and turntablist Yellowman (Winston Foster), a pioneer of "dancehall" (reggae music with rock drums) who established his reputation with Mister Yellowman (1982), crossover artists such as Eddy Grant, with the electronic Afro-rock-reggae-funk fusion of Walking on Sunshine (1979), Eek-a-Mouse (Ripton Joseph Hylton), who invented a unique vocal technique that harked back to the early days of toasting, as displayed on Wa Do Dem (1982), and Mikey Dread (Michael Campbell), who crafted African Anthem/ At The Control Dubwise (1979), with help from Scientist, King Tubby, Augustus Pablo and Sly & Robbie, and World War III (1981), with help from Scientist, after collaborating with the punk-rock band Clash.

As far as dub goes, King Tubby raised an entire generation of recording engineers, who went on to become innovators of Jamaican music, such as Prince Jammy (Lloyd James), who concocted the all-digital reggae Under Me Sleng Teng (1985), credited with inventing "ragga" (a fusion of reggae, rap and electronic dance music), and Scientist (Overton Brown).

Popular reggae musicians of the 1980s included Judy Mowatt, who, as a backup vocalist for Marley, was one of reggae's first female performers, and, as a soloist, crossed over into pop-soul balladry, Ivory Coast's sociopolitical bard Alpha Blondy (Kone Seydou), and David "Ziggy" Marley, son of the prophet, who sold out his father's myth to the international disco-pop crowds. Dancehall toaster Shabba Ranks (Rexton Gordon) and Shinehead (Carl Aiken) were the stars of ragga hip-hop.

The star of the 1990s was Buju Banton (Mark Anthony Myrie), revealed by Til Shiloh (1995).