ABSTRACT
This chapter provides an analysis of the history of reggae in Britain, its intimate connections with Jamaica and its influence on the creolisation of British pop music. It shows how reggae musicians in the United Kingdom developed a specific discourse on migration and race relations in the emergent multicultural society, notably through their lyrics. The chapter argues that Anglo-Jamaican popular music has not just accompanied or represented the struggles of black Caribbean communities in the United Kingdom, but has been very much on the frontline of the fight against institutional racism and for the recognition of Caribbean culture. In the 1970s with the second generation of reggae musicians in the United Kingdom, the sons and daughters of the Windrush “immigrants,” and the popularity of Bob Marley, roots reggae and Rastafari. Music occupies a central place in Caribbean culture, which explains both why immigrants were bent on preserving it and why music itself became the target of symbolic and physical attacks.
