The dancehall deejays of the 1980s and ’90s who refined the practice of “toasting” (rapping over instrumental tracks) were heirs to reggae’s politicization of music. These deejays influenced the emergence of hip-hop music in the United States and extended the market for reggae into the African American community. At the beginning of the 21st century, reggae remained one of the weapons of choice for the urban poor, whose “lyrical gun,” in the words of performer Shabba Ranks, earned them a measure of respectability.

During this period of reggae’s development, a connection grew between the music and the Rastafarian movement, which encourages the relocation of the African diaspora to Africa, deifies the Ethiopian emperor Haile Selassie I (whose precoronation name was Ras [Prince] Tafari), and endorses the sacramental use of ganja (marijuana). Rastafari (Rastafarianism) advocates equal rights and justice and draws on the mystical consciousness of kumina, an earlier Jamaican religious tradition that ritualized communication with ancestors.

the music became a voice for the poor and dispossessed

Reggae evolved from these roots and bore the weight of increasingly politicized lyrics that addressed social and economic injustice.

In the mid-1960s, under the direction of producers such as Duke Reid and Coxsone Dodd, Jamaican musicians dramatically slowed the tempo of ska, whose energetic rhythms reflected the optimism that had heralded Jamaica’s independence from Britain in 1962