Reggae takes root in Africa

Oseloke Augustine Onwubuya (9 May 1958 - 10 June 2018), billed Ras Kimono, was one of the two men who made reggae a Nigerian music rather than a Jamaican one being covered. In the early 1980s he was in Jastix, the Benin City band that also held Majek Fashek, Amos McRoy Jegg and Black Rice Osagie, playing weekly in local bars and clubs before any of them recorded alone. His solo debut Under Pressure, on Premier Music in 1989, sold over a hundred thousand copies and made him a continental name on the strength of "Rum-Bar Stylée", with "Natty Get Jail" and "Rhumba Stylee" behind it. What distinguished the record was that it did not imitate: the delivery carries Jamaican patois and Nigerian pidgin at once, the register Fela Kuti had already used to reach the urban poor directly. He died on 10 June 2018.

Seydou Koné, born 1 January 1953 in Dimbokro and billed Alpha Blondy, is the artist who made reggae an African language rather than an imported one. Raised Muslim by his grandmother, he studied English in Liberia and then in New York at Hunter College and Columbia, and learned reggae from Bob Marley records lent to him by a Liberian friend. He returned to Côte d'Ivoire in the early 1980s and, with his twelve-piece band the Solar System, released Jah Glory in 1982 and Cocody Rock in 1984. In 1986 he recorded Jérusalem in Kingston with the Wailers behind him, singing the title track across Arabic, English, French and Hebrew as an argument that the faiths could be addressed at once. He sings in Dioula, French and English, and his subjects are African politics, Pan-African unity and the failures of the states he lives under — "Brigadier Sabari" is an account of a beating by Abidjan police.

Edo State capital where the reggae group Jastix formed in the early 1980s, launching Majek Fashek and Ras Kimono, making it a founding hub of Nigerian reggae alongside Lagos.

Majekodunmi Fasheke (March 1963 - 1 June 2020), billed Majek Fashek and known as the Rainmaker, came up in Jastix, the Benin City reggae band he shared with Ras Kimono, Amos McRoy Jegg and Black Rice Osagie, before going solo at the end of the 1980s. Prisoner of Conscience appeared on Tabansi in 1988 and its single "Send Down the Rain" took six PMAN awards and made him Nigeria's biggest reggae act; I&I Experience followed in 1989 carrying the anti-apartheid "Free Africa, Free Mandela". He moved to CBS Nigeria for So Long Too Long and then signed to Interscope, releasing Spirit of Love in 1991 produced by Little Steven Van Zandt — a rare instance of a Nigerian reggae artist being taken up by an American major on his own terms. His later years were difficult and publicly so. He died on 1 June 2020, aged 57. His birth is recorded as March 1963 without a day in the sources reachable here, so the archive gives the month only.

Rocky Dawuni is a Ghanaian singer and producer whose self-described Afro Roots sound puts reggae together with Afrobeats, highlife and soul, and who has done more than anyone to make Ghana legible on the reggae map. His 2015 album Branches of the Same Tree brought a Best Reggae Album Grammy nomination — the first for a Ghanaian artist — and Songlines later placed it among the essential reggae albums. The EP Voice of Bunbon, Vol. 1 was nominated for Best Global Music Album in 2022 and "Never Bow Down" for Best Global Music Performance in 2023; a fourth nomination in 2024 made him the most-nominated Ghanaian in Grammy history. He is a UN Environment Goodwill Ambassador for Africa and an official cultural diplomat of Ghana, and has shared stages with Alpha Blondy and Angélique Kidjo.

Nigerian singer born July 6, 1966, in Isoko, Delta State, whose 1987 debut album My Kind of Music established her as Nigeria’s first prominent female reggae artist; Majek Fashek is credited with first calling her the "Queen of Nigerian reggae.".

Ivorian economic capital where Alpha Blondy was discovered on the television talent show First Chance and recorded his breakthrough album Jah Glory, establishing the city as a launching point for Ivorian reggae alongside Tiken Jah Fakoly’s early career.

Doumbia Moussa Fakoly, born 23 June 1968 in Odienné in north-western Côte d'Ivoire, was born into a family of griots — which is the point rather than the trivia, because a griot's inherited job is to say in public what others cannot. He formed his first group, Djelys, in 1987, and by the late 1990s was West Africa's most exposed political voice in reggae. His subjects are neo-colonialism, corruption and African unity: the 2002 album Françafrique took its title from the term for France's continuing grip on its former colonies, and "Plus rien ne m'étonne" and "Ouvrez les frontières" are argument set to a rhythm rather than protest gestures. Death threats drove him into exile in Mali in 2003, and he has continued to record and tour from there and from Bamako. He is generally named with Alpha Blondy as the pair who made Ivorian reggae a form of its own.

Lucky Philip Dube (3 August 1964 - 18 October 2007) was Africa's best-selling reggae artist, and got there by giving up a career that was already working. Born in Ermelo, he recorded six albums of Zulu mbaqanga from 1981 before turning to reggae in the mid-1980s, having heard Peter Tosh, Bob Marley and Jimmy Cliff. The apartheid state banned the result, Rastas Never Die, in 1985 — which settled the question of whether the change was commercial. Slave followed and went gold, and Prisoner and House of Exile carried a protest music that was pointedly not bitter, addressed at a system rather than at people. He toured widely and was among the first African artists to make reggae something other than an import. He was shot dead in the Johannesburg suburb of Rosettenville on 18 October 2007, in front of two of his children, in what police treated as a carjacking.

Benin City, Nigeria-based reggae group of the early-to-mid 1980s whose members included Majek Fashek, Ras Kimono and Amos McRoy Gregg, launching the solo careers of two of Nigeria’s most influential reggae voices after the group disbanded around 1988.

Nigerian reggae singer from Warri, Delta State, born December 25, 1959, who pioneered a socially conscious "Kolomental Revolutionaire" style and broke through with the 1989 album Tribulation, followed by Conqueror (1990).

How the fight over 'slack' versus 'conscious' lyrics became dancehall's defining debate.

In 1982, a 19-year-old on a South London sound system deejayed faster than anyone had heard, and a UK style was born.

How a cheap keyboard preset in 1985 reset the sound of dancehall.

How operators, selectors and live tapes helped turn local deejays into recording artists.