As Jamaica experience a change in political regime during the 1970s, various styling’s of music began to form out of older styles, such as reggae. Dance Hall music is one such genre that came about in the late 1970s.
Dance hall artists took old rhythms from music in the 1960s, tweaked some things, and then added new vocals to create the first dance hall sounds.
During the early 1980s, DJ’s began to switch gears and do less harmonious singing to their beats, and more rapping or saluting. As a result, sound clash, which is composed of harsher tunes, began to develop within the beats.
In the mid-1980s, dance hall music became more and more digitized. Fully digitized dance hall music became its own subgenre: Ragga music.
Modern dance hall has become popular on the billboard charts, but also has gotten a bad rap because of many homophobic lyrics that have been considered violent by such people as Jamaican reporter Ian Boyne.