What was the first reggae song to get to number one in the charts?
From its birth in the late 1960s, reggae was an instantly impactful and celebrated movement in the musical history of Jamaica. While it shares some of its sonic DNA with other genres such as ska and rocksteady that had existed before it, reggae was something of a phenomenon that would spread rapidly from its tiny island home and find pockets of success from across the globe.
The first reggae single to hit number one in the UK charts was ‘Israelites’, a track by Desmond Dekker and the Aces that was originally released in 1968 and is still celebrated as one of the genre’s most glowing examples. Despite having a lilting syncopated rhythm that would appear joyful on the surface, the song explores the idea of working hard and not getting paid enough for your labour. In a feature published in the Independent in 2006, Dekker explained that the hit is “about how hard life was in Jamaica, how we were all downtrodden, just like the Israelites who Moses led to the promised land”.
The reference to the Israelites draws links to the belief in Rastafarian culture that Jamaicans are the true descendants of the tribe that were enslaved in Egypt, and the parallels can be drawn here with the way Dekker uses the idea of slaving away at work for minimal reward. The iconic opening line, “get up in the morning and slaving for bread, sir, so that every mouth can be fed”, highlights how the duty is often placed on one member of the family to provide for the needs of many, and Dekker explained that this was directly inspired by a conversation he overheard between an arguing couple.
“I heard a couple arguing about money,” he recalled. “She was saying she needs money and he was saying the work he was doing was not giving him enough. I related to those things and began to sing a little song.”
Despite a limited initial release in 1968, it became a hit in the UK in March 1969 and is largely credited with popularising reggae on a worldwide scale. While the cultural references and lyrics sung in Jamaican patois would have been unfamiliar to audiences in other countries, its earworm qualities and effervescent charm were unavoidable and would consequently reach number one in the UK charts, remaining there for one week.
The knock-on effect would be that it sparked separate movements in the UK, with 2 Tone emerging through band such as The Specials and The Selecter forming a decade later, and having hits that tackled the same themes about social issues and class inequality while taking musical influence from reggae and ska music from Jamaica.
So, what is the first reggae song?
As previously noted, there are often some blurry boundaries between reggae and its precursors in ska and rocksteady. Ska was the earliest term to be coined of the three, with it emerging in the 1950s as a syncopated fusion of blues and local Caribbean styles of music such as calypso. Rocksteady would then later arrive in the ‘60s as a more relaxed and downtempo incarnation of the genre.
There are many who are credited with being pioneering figures in both scenes, with ska largely dominated by Studio One recording artists such as The Skatalites and The Ethiopians and key figures such as Coxsone Dodd and Don Drummond. Rocksteady would then see the emergence of acts such as The Wailers and Prince Buster, both of whom would become important to the transition into reggae later in the ‘60s.
But what was the first example of reggae, and where did the term originally come from? In actual fact, ‘Israelites’ might not have been far behind being the first of its kind, as the first known song to coin the term also came in 1968 with the song ‘Do the Reggay’ by The Maytals.
Toots Hibbert, the lead vocalist and chief songwriter with The Maytals, had already been important to the rise of ska and rocksteady since 1962, but it was six years later that they came to write the song that would lend its name to the burgeoning genre that would eventually become world-renowned.
While still quite slow in the same way as rocksteady, it perhaps unwittingly birthed its own new similar style simply through the repeated use of the title. Hibbert explained in an interview with Matt Hibbert for BBC Radio 6 Music that the term ‘reggae’ originated from Jamaican slang for a scruffy person, which is why the looser style of the song became synonymous with the word.
