Where this was said
The Origins of the Word 'Reggae' and Early Artists
At 28:20 · chapter starts 25:20
Where exactly the word 'reggae' came from is genuinely murky. Chuck presents three competing origin stories: Frederick 'Toots' Hibbert of Toots and the Maytals said he replaced the derogatory term 'streggae' with something less loaded; another account traces it to a word for ragged clothing that mutated through dance trend usage; a third candidate is Little Roy, who in the same year released a record called 'Reggae Soul' using the modern spelling. What seems clear is that 1968 was the year the word crystallised and the music it named announced itself to the world. Toots and the Maytals, who started in 1962 as a ska act, had their first big hit with '54-56, That's My Number' in 1968. Desmond Dekker's 'The Israelites' — also 1968 — is widely cited as the bridge between rocksteady and reggae proper, its lyrics encoding the Rastafarian vision of the African diaspora as the true Israelites trapped in Babylon.
