ABSTRACT
Some people claim that when Bob Marley died in 1981, reggae died with him. They argue that without Marley’s charismatic leadership and creative genius, reggae has lost its way and much of its international appeal. Whether or not Marley’s death really did have a decisive impact on the music as a whole, it is true that nowadays reggae doesn’t always seem to grip the imagination of British youth as it once did. This is certainly the case with the music coming from Jamaica at the moment (1986). To understand the decline of Jamaican reggae and the Jamaican record industry we have to look at the wider social and political background.1
