ABSTRACT
Reggae combined Afro-Caribbean folk traditions like mento with rhythm and blues imported from African-American popular culture. Reggae is a commercial music, an estimated two billion dollar industry worldwide, whose artists seem consumed with the desire to "bust out" and achieve commercial success. The main source of moral authority in reggae during the 1970s was its connection with the philosophy and religion of Rastafari. While the reggae of the 1970s is now a legitimate part of official Jamaican culture, another form of reggae music is receiving the disdain of the elites but is enormously popular in the distressed urban neighborhoods of Kingston. Given the middle class's cooptation of "roots" reggae, the fans who represent the economically disfranchised demanded a more challenging and oppositional music, and found it in dancehall. In contrast to the older "roots" reggae, dancehall is firmly grounded in Afro-Caribbean working class culture, expressing in the street vernacular a disdain for ruling class social and economic practices.
