The French reggae and dancehall scene

Continental Europe's largest audience for Jamaican music through the 1990s and 2000s, and unusual among the diaspora scenes in not resting on a single migration. Its parts arrived separately: a francophone West African and West Indian audience for roots reggae from the 1970s, Paris bands of West Indian, African and mixed lineups from the early 1980s, a white ska and rocksteady revival out of the punk and skinhead movements, record-buying trips across the Channel to London, and, after 1981, a turn toward serious local musicianship that produced the session players who now back and record with visiting Jamaican artists. Its sound-system side is among the largest anywhere, and Martinique's shatta grew out of its dancehall wing.