The origins of reggae developed as a style of music on the island of Jamaica (in the Caribbean), and is found in African-Caribbean music, U.S. rhythm and blues, ska, and rocksteady. These were all 1960s precursors of reggae music.
Bob Marley was a singer/songwriter guitarist from Jamaica who is the best-known reggae musician of all time. He propelled reggae music to become popular outside Jamaica and wrote songs about the struggles of the impoverished and powerless. Marley released his first successful album, "Soul Rebels," in 1970 and continued to release albums throughout the 1970s.
In the 1960s, the word "reggae" was coined in Jamaica to identify a "'ragged style of dance music." Soon after it was coined, according to scaruffi.com, "it acquired the lament-like style of chanting and emphasized the syncopated beat. It also made explicit the relationship with the underworld of the 'Rastafarians'," who followed the philosophy of Marcus Garvey. It was Garvey who years earlier was a leader of the back-to-Africa movement.
Alongside of rock music, reggae music inverted the role of the bass and the guitar. The guitar was the lead voice of the music while the bass beat the typical hiccuping pattern. The drumming style of the music was known as the African nyah-bingi, which, according to scaruffi.com, was a style that mimicked the heartbeat with its pattern of "thump-thump, pause, thump-thump."
During the 1960s, reggae music was being distributed throughout the United Kingdom via an independent label known as Island. But it didn't become popular until Prince Buster's "Al Capone" began a brief "dance craze" in 1967. According to scaruffi.com, at this time Jamaican music was known as a ghetto phenomenon associated with gang-style violence.