Torch-bearers

Hervin Augustus Bailey Jr, born 1992 in Portmore, who emerged as part of the 2010s reggae revival alongside Runkus and Royal Blu; in 2019 Bunny Wailer brought him onto his final tour, and Blvk H3ro placed three tracks on UB40's 2021 album Bigga Baggariddim before earning a 2023 Grammy nomination for Best Global Music Performance.

London-born singer (b. 1982), "The Singing Wizard," son of rocksteady pioneer Alton Ellis, who performed alongside his father from age eleven and grew up around John Holt, Ken Boothe and Delroy Wilson; after his father's 2008 death he began recording solo, signing to Ghetto Youths International and releasing the single "End of Time" in 2009.

Rastafari mansion founded in Kingston in 1968 by Vernon 'Prophet Gad' Carrington; regarded as the most liberal of the orders, it organises members by the twelve tribes according to birth month and counted Bob Marley among its adherents, giving it a notable link to the international spread of reggae.

Dean Ivanhoe Fraser (born 4 August 1957, Kingston) is the saxophone voice of modern reggae — a player on thousands of sessions since the mid-1970s, and latterly one of its most influential producers and bandleaders. He took up clarinet at twelve and saxophone at fifteen, and met Ronald "Nambo" Robinson and Junior "Chico" Chin at a Jones Town youth club; the three became the foremost horn section in 1980s Jamaica. He joined Lloyd Parks' We The People Band in 1977, backing Dennis Brown on his Joe Gibbs recordings, and cut his own first album, Black Horn Man, for Gibbs in 1978, followed by Pure Horns and Double Dynamite (1979) and Revolutionary Sounds for Donovan Germain (1980). He played in the horn section behind the Roots Radics alongside Vin Gordon, Nambo Robinson, Dirty Harry Hall, Bobby Ellis and Deadly Headly Bennett. From the late 1990s he toured and recorded extensively with Luciano, and later became the producer and bandleader behind Tarrus Riley and Duane Stephenson — his production credits include Stephenson's "August Town" and Morgan Heritage's "Down by the River", with further work for Sanchez, Freddie McGregor and Bunny Rugs. Jamaica awarded him the Musgrave Medal in 1993.

Sean-Michael Francis, a Spanish Town-born singer who turned professional around 2012-13 and became part of the reggae revival's next cohort alongside Blvk H3ro; he has a writing credit and cameo on Protoje and Koffee's "Switch It Up" and voiced the 2021 posse cut "5Gs" with Kabaka Pyramid, Runkus and Jesse Royal.

Alton Ellis was a Jamaican singer closely associated with the birth of rocksteady - his own song "Rocksteady" (1966) is one source of the genre's name - recording for both Coxsone Dodd's Studio One and Duke Reid's Treasure Isle. His ballad "I'm Still in Love," released in 1967, became one of the most repeatedly re-voiced and sampled rhythms in Jamaican music, covered and versioned across reggae and dancehall for decades after.

Neville Livingston (1947-2021), singer, percussionist and the longest-surviving of the three original Wailers. He declined the international touring that took Marley and Tosh abroad, staying in Jamaica and building a body of work — Blackheart Man (1976) chief among it — that holds to roots and Rastafari without compromise. He remained an authority on the group's early history and a custodian of its catalogue until his death.

Roots singer born 1981 in Kingston to parents in the Twelve Tribes of Israel mansion of Rastafari, releasing Rastaman Meditation (2009), Original Dread (2015) and, via the Swiss label Evidence Music, Roots I Vision (2018) and Jamaica Jamaica (2023), touring festivals including Rototom Sunsplash and Reggae Jam.

Singer from August Town, St Andrew, born 1976, who spent eight years fronting the group To-Isis before Dean Fraser produced his 2007 debut album From August Town; he has also written songs recorded by Morgan Heritage, Gyptian, Tarrus Riley, Etana, Jah Cure, Luciano and Beres Hammond.

The 1966 tempo drop turned a session-band music into an island of singers.

When the tempo dropped, harmony and bass moved to the front.

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.

How a toast over a Treasure Isle rhythm helped invent the modern deejay.