Places in the Reggaeverse

Place Aotearoa NZ 1970s arrival · early-1980s Pacific reggae voice · living sceneAotearoa New Zealand · especially Auckland and Wellington

Jamaican rhythm found a different home in Aotearoa.

Place Côte d’Ivoire 1980s major breakthrough · living Ivorian reggae sceneAbidjan and across Côte d’Ivoire

One of Africa’s great reggae strongholds.

Place Ghana 1970s–80s adoption · 1990s roots growth · living reggae-dancehall sceneAccra, Ashaiman and scenes across Ghana

Reggae took root beside highlife, hiplife and Ghana’s own Black Atlantic history.

Place Hawai‘i early-1980s local experiments · late-1980s/early-1990s boom · living sceneHawai‘i

Hawai‘i reshaped reggae into a smoother local sound often called Jawaiian or island reggae, mixing Jamaican roots with Hawaiian musical identity, R&B and pop.

Place Kingston · Jamaica mid-20th-century recording boom → living musical cultureKingston and across Jamaica

The island where sound systems, studios, players and dancers kept making new music out of everything that arrived.

Scene Reggae en Español 1980s growth · early-1990s regional influencePanama → New York → Puerto Rico and Latin America

Panamanian artists took Jamaican dancehall riddims into Spanish before “reggaeton” had a name.

Place Salvador · Bahia late-1970s bloco-afro infrastructure · 1980s samba-reggae emergence · living cultureSalvador · Bahia · Brazil

An Afro-Brazilian city where reggae met bloco-afro drums, carnival and Black political identity and became something new.

Place South Africa 1980s major growth · living South African reggae cultureSouth Africa

Reggae became a powerful South African voice during apartheid, with Lucky Dube carrying local experience into a sound that reached audiences across the continent and far beyond it.

Place United Kingdom postwar Caribbean migration · 1960s–presentLondon, Birmingham and cities across Britain

Jamaican music did not simply arrive in Britain and stay the same.