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"Below the Waist," a 2000s Queen Ifrica recording, is associated with the singer's social-commentary songwriting, part of a lineage of Jamaican artists using popular recordings to prompt public conversation on sensitive social issues.

Freddie McGregor's record, and the name he took for his own label and studio — the Big Ship operation that has since produced a substantial catalogue and given the singer a second career as a producer and label owner.

"Greetings," Half Pint's mid-1980s single for King Jammy, was one of the singer's signature early-digital-dancehall hits, delivered in the sweet, agile tenor that made him one of the era's most in-demand vocalists.

"Hard Time Pressure" by Sugar Minott is useful for tracing singer-led social commentary at the roots-to-dancehall transition, where Studio One memory, sound-system audiences and emerging dancehall production overlapped.

"Here Comes Trouble" by Chronixx is a reggae-revival recording associated with the singer's international rise, pairing roots-reggae themes with modern production and festival-ready performance energy.

Barrington Levy's 1985 record, known by its "broader than Broadway" hook — one of the most recognisable vocal phrases dancehall has produced, and endlessly sampled and interpolated in hip hop and jungle. Levy's soaring style made him the great singer of the early dancehall era, and this is its concentrate.

The mento and folk standard that begins "carry me ackee go a Linstead Market". It is a market song about not selling — the singer's ackee goes untouched and the money does not come — and its plain account of hard trade is part of why it has stayed in the repertoire, recorded by everyone from folk collectors to Harry Belafonte.

Tenor Saw on the Stalag rhythm, 1985 — the biggest voice of the digital dancehall's first year on one of the most enduring rhythms the music has. The hook has been sampled and answered constantly, and the record stands as the standard demonstration of what a singer could do over a spare computerised track. Tenor Saw died in 1988, in his early twenties.

"Rumours," a Gregory Isaacs recording from the digital dancehall era, shows the singer adapting his romantic, roots-adjacent vocal style to the computerized riddims that had come to dominate Jamaican production by the late 1980s.

"Unchained" is a Bob Andy recording from his Studio One years, part of a songbook that established him as one of the era's most respected singer-songwriters, distinct from the sound-system-driven deejay and vocal-group styles dominating the same label's catalogue.

1000 Volts of Holt, released in 1973 on Trojan Records with UK orchestral overdubs by Tony Ashfield, was one of the biggest-selling reggae albums in Britain in the early 1970s, building on John Holt's fame as former lead singer of the Paragons.

Admiral Tibet was a Jamaican singer associated with "cultural" (Rastafari-influenced, socially conscious) dancehall through the late 1980s and 1990s, part of a lineage of artists balancing dancehall's rhythms with roots-style lyrical content.

Bermuda-born and Jamaica-based, Aisha Davis is a singer, songwriter and trained contemporary dancer who also works as an actress, voice-over artist, voice tutor and MC. Her own music is a fusion of reggae and dancehall with soul and alternative pop, and her singles include "We Got Love" (and its remix with Mr Lexx), "Funny Feeling" with Double X of TOK, and the 2003 duet with Anthony B, "Someone Loves You Honey", which remains her best-known record. Alongside her solo work she has been a heavily worked touring vocalist — lead and backing — for Shaggy, Shabba Ranks, Ky-Mani Marley, Cocoa Tea and Alborosie, and has appeared with Maxi Priest and Tanya Stephens. She has toured Europe, India, Africa, the US and the Caribbean, and played Jamaica's major shows including Reggae Sumfest, the Jamaica Jazz and Blues Festival and Carifesta, plus Rototom in Italy and Reggae Jam and Summer Jam in Germany. Dates and a full discography still need building out from a catalogue source. Not to be confused with Aisha (Pamela Ross), the UK roots singer also in the archive.

Singer who began as a youth at Studio One and became a busy roots and UK lovers-rock voice through the late 1970s and 1980s.

Reggae-pop singer-songwriter (Alaine Laughton) whose 2005 breakthrough "No Ordinary Love" rode Don Corleon's Seasons Riddim; she has since worked with Sly & Robbie and top Jamaican producers.