Jamaican music history
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Jamaican Music Makes History
With the introduction of the 1950s, popular American music started to part. Jazz and be-bop became the new interest as well as rhythm and blues, and the black style also known as race music. The jazz orchestra sounds began coming off the charts and moving up was harder, stronger, and more youthful tunes. This era came on strong around the world.
The beginning of Jamaican music began five centuries ago; around the same time Columbus colonized the land of the Arawak Indians. This colonization marked the start of domination by the Spanish and then the English in Caribbean vicinity. "Blacks were brought in as slaves by the English, and although Jamaica has had it's independence since 1963, the tension of authority and control still reigns" (Sherman 4). Jamaica is a story of injustice, international influence, ineffective governing, and unequal distribution of wealth; all of these elements provide a solid base for the theme of oppression and the need for a revolution and salvation in Jamaican music. Reggae in particular reflects these injustices, and the feelings, needs and desires to change the lifestyle that Jamaicans have historically lived.
Jamaica was beginning to change, people were flooding into the capital, Kingston, in search of their own piece of postwar prosperity and leaving the rural economy...