Reggae goes global

Robert Nesta Marley (1945-1981), the singer, songwriter and guitarist from Nine Mile, St Ann who became the most widely heard voice Jamaica has produced. He formed The Wailers with Bunny Wailer and Peter Tosh in the early 1960s, moving through ska and rocksteady at Studio One before the group's roots-reggae work with Lee "Scratch" Perry and then the international run on Island from Catch a Fire (1973) onward. Shot at his Hope Road home in December 1976 two days before the Smile Jamaica concert, he played anyway, left for London, and returned in 1978 to join the hands of Michael Manley and Edward Seaga on stage at the One Love Peace Concert. He died of melanoma in 1981, aged 36, and was awarded the Order of Merit. His catalogue remains the single largest route by which the rest of this archive reaches the world. He married Rita Anderson in 1966 and had children with several other women during the marriage; Cedella, Ziggy, Stephen, Sharon (adopted), Stephanie (adopted), Robbie, Rohan, Karen, Julian, Ky-Mani, Damian and Makeda are all recognised among his children, several of them Grammy-winning musicians in their own right.

Chris Blackwell (born 1937) is the Jamaican-British founder of Island Records, established in Jamaica in 1959 and later relocated to Britain. He scored an early international ska hit with Millie Small's "My Boy Lollipop" (1964) and is widely credited as the figure most responsible for bringing reggae to a global audience, signing Bob Marley and the Wailers and releasing Catch a Fire (1973). He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2001.

Jimmy Cliff (born James Chambers, 1944, Somerton District, Jamaica) is a Jamaican ska and reggae singer, songwriter and actor, and one of the music's most important international ambassadors. He starred in and provided songs for the influential 1972 film The Harder They Come, whose soundtrack helped bring reggae to a global audience, and is known for anthems such as "Many Rivers to Cross," "You Can Get It If You Really Want" and "The Harder They Come." He is one of only a small number of performers inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame for reggae.

Founded in Jamaica in 1959 by Chris Blackwell and moved to London in 1962, Island carried Jamaican music to the world: Millie Small's "My Boy Lollipop" in 1964, the rock-market reframing of Bob Marley and the Wailers from Catch a Fire (1973), and international careers for Toots and the Maytals, Burning Spear and Black Uhuru. Blackwell sold the label to PolyGram in 1989; its catalogue remains reggae's widest global gateway.

Jamaican records reached the world by half a dozen different routes — a London pop session, a film soundtrack, a cover version, a remix — and almost never the one the industry expected.

Between 1972 and 1978, reggae went to the polls and then tried to broker a peace.

How Rastafari belief and Nyabinghi rhythm gave roots reggae its voice.

In the mid-to-late 1970s, international labels started signing Jamaican singles artists as album acts, and a run of records built to be heard start to finish redefined what a reggae release could be.