REGGAE

Nov. 30, 2018

UNESCO added the Reggae music genre that originated in Jamaica to its collection of “intangible cultural heritage” deemed worthy of protection and promotion.

About:

  • Reggae is a music genre that originated in Jamaica in the late 1960s.

  • The term reggae denotes a particular music style that was strongly influenced by traditional mento as well as American jazz and Rhythm and Blues and evolved out of the earlier genres ska and

  • Reggae usually relates news, social gossip, and political comment.

  • It is instantly recognizable from the counterpoint between the bass and drum downbeat, and the offbeat rhythm section.

  • Artists like Bob Marley, Peter Tosh, Jimmy Cliff etc. popularised the music genre that originated in Jamaica.

View of UNESCO while including it in the list of intangible cultural heritage:

  • While reggae started out as “the voice of the marginalised” it was “now played and embraced by a wide cross-section of society, including various genders, ethnic and religious groups.”

  • The music genre has contributed to international discourse on issues of injustice, resistance, love and humanity underscores the dynamics of the element as being at once cerebral, socio-political, sensual and spiritual.

Apart from Reggae, some of the other cultural traditions included in the intangible cultural heritage List are Horsemanship of the Spanish Riding School in Vienna, A Mongolian camel-coaxing ritual, Czech puppetry, Centuries-old form of Georgian wrestling called chidaoba and Irish sport of hurling.

Note To readers: For detail of UNESCO intangible cultural heritage, kindly refer “News Recitals: November 27, 2018”

Source : The Hindu