Women behind the boards and the business

"Miss Pat": co-founder with her husband Vincent of Randy's record shop and the Studio 17 room at 17 North Parade, Kingston, and then of VP Records in Queens in 1979 — the V and P are their initials. She helped run the largest independent reggae label in the world for four decades and published a memoir, Miss Pat: My Reggae Music Journey, in 2021.

Cedella Marley Minto, daughter of Bob Marley and Rita Marley, sang with siblings Ziggy, Stephen and Sharon in Ziggy Marley and the Melody Makers before becoming CEO of Tuff Gong International at 23, overseeing its Kingston recording studio, pressing plant and distribution arm. She also founded the Catch a Fire clothing line and has written a series of children's books about her father's life and message.

Sharon Althea Marley, the first child of Rita Marley and adopted daughter of Bob Marley, sang alongside siblings Cedella, Stephen and Ziggy in Ziggy Marley and the Melody Makers from 1979, later heading A&R for Ghetto Youths United and curating the Bob Marley Museum before returning to a solo recording career in 2021.

Ward Theatre is a historic Kingston theatre associated with Jamaican stage performance, festival culture and public entertainment, part of the formal performance infrastructure that stood alongside street dances and sound systems.

The company built around Bob Marley's label, named for his street title, and after 1981 the institutional keeper of his catalogue and premises. The Marcus Garvey Drive complex holds the studio, pressing plant and label offices, making it one of the few vertically integrated music operations in the Caribbean.

Anita Mahfood, known professionally as Marguerita, was a Jamaican rhumba dancer of Lebanese-Jamaican descent, schooled at Alpha Academy, who became Kingston's leading exotic dancer of the late 1950s. In 1959 she insisted that Count Ossie's Rastafarian drummers back her show at the Ward Theatre over promoter Vere Johns's objections, giving Count Ossie's ensemble its first performance before a mainstream audience and helping legitimise Rastafarian music in Jamaican popular entertainment. She died in 1965.

Oswald Williams (c. 1926-1976), the drummer who brought Rastafari into Jamaican popular music. From his camp in the Wareika Hills above Kingston he taught the akete drumming that became nyabinghi, and his drums on the Folkes Brothers' "Oh Carolina" in 1960 are usually described as the first time that sound reached a commercial record. With the Mystic Revelation of Rastafari he made Grounation, a triple album of drumming, chanting and jazz horns that stands as the fullest document of the tradition.

Reggae family group formed in Brooklyn in 1979 by four of Bob and Rita Marley's children -- Ziggy, Stephen, Cedella and Sharon Marley -- who first recorded the Bob Marley-composed 'Children Playing in the Streets'. The group's Conscious Party (1988), One Bright Day (1989) and Fallen Is Babylon (1997) each won a Grammy Award, carrying the Marley name into a new generation of reggae.

Sonia Pottinger (1931-2010), known as "Miss P," was Jamaica's first female record producer, active from the mid-1960s to the mid-1980s. Working from her Tip Top Records shop, she released rocksteady and reggae hits on her Gay Feet, High Note, Tip Top and Rainbow labels for the Ethiopians, the Melodians ("Swing and Dine"), Delano Stewart, Ken Boothe and others. She acquired Duke Reid's Treasure Isle catalogue in 1974 and produced Culture's Harder Than the Rest (1978).

Olivia 'Babsy' Grange, Jamaica's Minister with responsibility for culture and entertainment, who championed the successful 2018 UNESCO bid to inscribe reggae, launched the Jamaica Music Society, and oversees Reggae Month observances.

Rastafari drumming came down from the Wareika Hills and onto record while colonial-era radio kept its distance.

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

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

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.