Lovers rock: the diaspora builds its own reggae

South London lovers-rock singer who broke through in Mad Professor's all-woman Wild Bunch and then solo on Ariwa with "Country Living," winning British reggae best-female-singer honours through the late 1980s.

British lovers-rock and early-dancehall singer (1965-1994) whose Gussie Clarke-cut "Champion Lover" for Greensleeves became the template for Shabba Ranks's global hit "Mr Loverman.".

Janet Kay Bogle, whose "Silly Games" reached number two in the UK in 1979 and remains the record lovers rock is defined by. Produced by Dennis Bovell, it is built on a famously difficult vocal line that sits high and stays there, and its success gave a British-born Jamaican music its first national moment. She has worked as an actor as well as a singer in the decades since.

British lovers-rock singer remembered chiefly for the enduring early-1980s ballad "Paradise," a much-loved fixture of the genre's canon.

British lovers-rock singer (Carol Simms), a founding voice of the vocal group Brown Sugar before a solo career associated with "Black Pride" and "Friday Night.".

British lovers-rock and reggae singer-musician nicknamed "Mr Honey Vibes," a Fashion Records mainstay and, with Tippa Irie, part of the duo behind "Ragamuffin Girl.".

One of the defining voices of lovers rock. Her album Hopelessly in Love, released in 1981 on her own terms rather than through a major, sold heavily to an audience the British record industry had not noticed existed, and it remains the record the style is measured by. She is a songwriter and arranger as well as a singer, which was rarer still for a young Black woman in British music at the time.

The South London vocal trio central to early lovers rock, formed in the mid-1970s with Caron Wheeler among its members. "I'm in Love with a Dreadlocks" (1977) is the signature record; Wheeler later carried the harmony training into Soul II Soul's worldwide hits.

South London dub/lovers-rock label and studio founded 1979 by Neil 'Mad Professor' Fraser; a prolific 300-plus-release catalogue spanning dub, lovers rock and reggae, including 'Jah Shaka Meets Mad Professor At Ariwa Sounds'.

A London schoolgirl when she recorded "Caught You in a Lie" in 1975 — a cover of a Robert Parker soul song, cut over a reggae rhythm at a talent show she had won. It is widely taken as the first lovers rock record, and it set the template the style followed: a young British voice, a soul song, and a rhythm slow enough to dance close to. She died in 1991, aged thirty-one.

Manchester-born singer who became one of British reggae and lovers rock's enduring voices — a Blackstones collaborator, a soloist since the late 1970s, and a fixture of the UK revival circuit whose live reputation has outlasted trends around her.

Mad Professor (Neil Joseph Stephen Fraser, born 27 March 1955 in Georgetown, Guyana) is a British-based dub producer, engineer and remixer regarded as a leading figure of the second wave of dub. He founded the Ariwa Sounds studio and label in South London around 1979-1980, building it into one of the UK's most enduring reggae imprints, and collaborated with dub pioneer Lee "Scratch" Perry as well as Sly and Robbie, Horace Andy and Pato Banton. He is also widely known outside reggae for his dub reworking of Massive Attack's Protection, released as No Protection.

How black British teenagers turned reggae towards romance in 1970s London, and why the front-room blues dance became the music's true home.

From the rocksteady queens and the first female producer to the I-Threes, the lovers-rock pioneers and the dancehall crown, women have carried Jamaican music from the studio floor to the world stage.

A new cohort of Jamaican deejays broke through on YouTube views and streaming charts rather than radio play, without breaking from dancehall's toasting lineage.

UNESCO's 2018 listing dignified the music worldwide - and started an argument about freezing a living culture.