Reggae and the UK

Aswad formed in Ladbroke Grove in 1975 — Brinsley Forde, Angus "Drummie Zeb" Gaye and Tony "Gad" Robinson — and were the band that proved British reggae did not have to be an imitation of Jamaican reggae. Their early work is heavy roots made by the children of Caribbean migrants about London rather than Kingston, and the instrumental "Warrior Charge" became a standard of the British sound. Forde was already a familiar face from the children's series Here Come the Double Deckers and the film Babylon, which the archive catalogues separately. The band moved steadily toward pop, and in March 1988 "Don't Turn Around" — a Diane Warren song first cut by Tina Turner as a B-side — took them to number one in Britain, the point at which a roots band from west London became a chart act. Rise and Shine followed in 1994 with "Shine" and "Warriors".

UB40 are a British reggae and pop band formed in Birmingham, England, in 1978, taking their name from a UK unemployment benefit form. Founded around brothers Ali and Robin Campbell, the multiracial group became one of the best-selling reggae acts worldwide, known for hits such as "Red Red Wine," "Kingston Town" and "(I Can't Help) Falling in Love with You," and for their "Labour of Love" covers albums.

The romantic reggae style that grew up in Britain from the mid-1970s — softer, slower and sung largely by young Black British women, over reggae rhythms shaped for the front room and the house party rather than the sound clash. Louisa Mark's "Caught You in a Lie" is usually treated as the starting point. It gave second-generation Caribbean Britain a music of its own, distinct from what Jamaica was exporting.

Steel Pulse came out of Handsworth in Birmingham, formed by schoolfriends around David Hinds — born there in 1956 to parents who had migrated from Jamaica in the mid-1950s — and were the British reggae band that answered the National Front directly rather than obliquely. Their first Island single, "Ku Klux Klan" in February 1978, was written by Hinds at that party, and the band performed it in hoods; the debut album Handsworth Revolution followed the same year into police violence and a rising far right, reached the UK top ten, and remains the record British reggae is measured by. They played the Rock Against Racism circuit alongside punk bands, which put roots reggae in front of an audience that had not sought it out. With Babylon the Bandit they became the first non-Jamaican act to win the Grammy for Best Reggae Album.

The west London carnival, running since the mid-1960s and the largest street festival in Europe — and, for Jamaican music, the annual moment when the sound systems take the streets. Static sounds line the route playing roots, dub, lovers rock and dancehall, and the carnival is where the British sound-system tradition is most publicly itself.

Jamaican music didn't just travel - it named streets, districts and venues on four continents.

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

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.