"Al Capone" (1964), Prince Buster's gangster-imagery ska hit whose gun-talk swagger fed the rude-boy aesthetic and later became a touchstone for the UK 2 Tone revival.

The first Festival Song winner, taken by The Maytals in the competition's inaugural year, 1966. The song long outlived the contest that produced it and has been versioned and sampled far beyond Jamaica.

Released on Prince Buster's own Voice of the People label, this record attacked the Chinese-Jamaican producer Leslie Kong, accusing him of profiting from material that rightfully belonged to Black Jamaicans and questioning his standing in the business. It was triggered partly by Buster's belief that Derrick Morgan's Kong-produced hit "Forward March" had lifted one of his own tunes, and it opened a war of words answered by Morgan and Kong with a reply record, to which Buster responded again with further songs including "Thirty Pieces of Silver" and "Praise Without Raise". Buster framed his stance as political, rooted in his 1962 conversion to Islam and a belief that record-industry profits should stay within the Black community, even as he remained personally friendly with Morgan throughout.

"Carry Go Bring Come," recorded by Justin Hinds & the Dominoes for Duke Reid's Treasure Isle label, is one of the group's best-known sides from the ska/early rocksteady period, its title itself a Jamaican expression for gossip and rumour-carrying.

Felix Headley "Deadly Headley" Bennett (1931-2016) was a Jamaican alto saxophonist trained at Alpha Boys School who worked as a session player from the 1950s, performing in the Studio One house band, Lynn Taitt's Jets and the Revolutionaries. He played on a vast number of ska, rocksteady and reggae recordings, including Bob Marley's first single "Judge Not" for Leslie Kong.

Derrick Morgan's independence record, cut for Leslie Kong at Beverley's and released in 1962. It celebrates the moment directly and became the song most associated with that August, a ska single doing the work of a national anthem, in a year when the music and the country arrived at once.

"Guns of Navarone," the Skatalites' ska instrumental take on the film theme of the same name, became one of the group's best-known recordings and a staple of ska compilations - an example of how Jamaican studio bands freely reworked film and pop themes into the new ska idiom.

Desmond Dekker's 1969 follow-up to "Israelites": another Leslie Kong production into the UK top ten, its title Jamaican speech unapologetically intact — proof the breakthrough was a career, not an accident.

Millie Small's 1964 international hit, produced by Chris Blackwell and widely cited as an early global breakthrough for ska.

"Oh Carolina," recorded by the Folkes Brothers in 1960 and produced by Prince Buster, is built on Count Ossie's Nyabinghi drumming - a rare case of Rastafari ceremonial drums appearing directly on a commercial Jamaican pop record, years before that influence became widely recognized in reggae history.