Music is how most of the world first hears Jamaican Patois. From the 1960s, Kingston's studios and sound systems produced ska, rocksteady, reggae, dub and dancehall, and the voices on those records spoke and sang in a Jamaican way. Reggae made Rastafari words like Jah, Babylon and irie familiar across the planet. Dancehall made broad, fast Patois the sound of the dance. And Jamaican migrants took both to Britain and North America, where Patois words became part of everyday youth slang.
From mento to ska: the sound of a new nation
Before ska there was mento, Jamaica's rural folk music, often witty and full of local Patois storytelling. In the early 1960s, around independence, Kingston musicians took American R&B, shifted the emphasis to the offbeat and created ska: fast, brassy and joyful, played by bands like the Skatalites. Later in the decade the tempo slowed into rocksteady, with the bassline pushed forward, and by the late 1960s that had become reggae.
Reggae and the language of Rastafari
Reggae became the voice of Kingston's poorest districts and of the Rastafari faith, and through Bob Marley and the Wailers, Peter Tosh, Bunny Wailer, Toots Hibbert, Jimmy Cliff, Burning Spear, Dennis Brown and many more, it reached a global audience. Rastafari brought its own vocabulary into the music, and from there into the world:
| Word | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Jah | God, in Rastafari usage |
| Babylon | the corrupt, oppressive system; also the police |
| I and I | we, or me, in a sense that unites the speaker with others and with God |
| irie | good, at peace, all is well |
| ital | natural, clean food and living |
| one love | unity and love; also a warm farewell |
| bun fire | "burn with fire": condemnation of wickedness |
Many reggae singers sing in a voice closer to English than they'd use in conversation, with Patois words, grammar and pronunciation woven through. That made reggae easier for overseas listeners to follow, and it's one reason so many Rasta terms travelled. In 2018 UNESCO added reggae to its list of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.
The sound system and the deejay
None of this happened without the sound system: huge mobile speaker rigs that brought the dance to the people, run by operators like Coxsone Dodd and Duke Reid. Sound-system culture created its own roles and words:
- The selecta picks and plays the records.
- The deejay chants, "toasts" or sings live over the music. In Jamaica, a deejay is a vocalist, not the person playing records. Deejays such as U-Roy made toasting a recording art from the late 1960s.
- The riddim is the instrumental track that many artists voice songs on. Records often had a "version" on the B-side, the same tune without vocals, ready for a deejay.
- Producers such as King Tubby and Lee "Scratch" Perry stripped riddims back and remixed them with echo and reverb into dub.
Deejaying put broad, fast, improvised Patois at the centre of the music for the first time. And when Jamaican-born DJ Kool Herc brought sound-system techniques to a party in the Bronx in 1973, he helped spark hip-hop, whose MCs descend in part from Jamaican deejays.
Dancehall: Patois at full speed
From the late 1970s dancehall took over: rawer and faster, and fully digital after Wayne Smith's "Under Mi Sleng Teng" (1985), produced by King Jammy, whose computerised riddim reshaped the music. Deejays like Yellowman, Shabba Ranks, Buju Banton, Beenie Man, Bounty Killer, Sean Paul, Vybz Kartel, Spice and Shenseea carried it worldwide.
Dancehall is where much new Patois slang is born. It moves fast, and some of it fades within a few years, but many words have stuck:
| Word | Meaning |
|---|---|
| bashment | a big party or dance; as a description, flashy |
| big chune | a hit song, a great tune |
| pull up | when the selecta stops a tune and starts it again because the crowd loves it |
| tun up | turned all the way up, excellent |
| ram jam | packed, completely full (Di dance did ram jam.) |
| nice up | liven up (Nice up di dance!) |
| mash up | destroy; but di party did mash up means it was amazing |
| wine | to dance with rolling hip movements |
| bruk out | to let loose, dance wildly |
| massive | the crowd or fans (big up di massive) |
| bun | burn: to reject or condemn something; also to cheat on a partner |
Wi a go a di bashment.
We're going to the party.
Di chune too loud.
The song is too loud.
Some dancehall lyrics are explicit, violent or homophobic, and some songs have been the subject of long-running controversy. That's part of the history too, and a reason to understand lyrics before repeating them. The slang guide covers what's current.
How the music travelled with the people
Migration and music moved together. Jamaicans who settled in Britain from the Windrush era built sound systems in London, Birmingham and other cities, and later British genres such as lovers rock, jungle, grime and UK drill drew on Jamaican music and Patois. Patois became an important ingredient in Multicultural London English, with words like wagwan, ting and bare moving into everyday youth talk. Toronto's slang is heavily shaped by Jamaican speech, heard in the city's music and at Caribana. In New York, Jamaican communities in Brooklyn and the Bronx were part of hip-hop from the start. And reggaeton grew in part out of Spanish-language reggae and dancehall from Panama and Puerto Rico.
The result is that a teenager in London or Toronto may use Jamaican words every day without thinking of them as Jamaican. Diaspora usage sometimes shifts meanings: bare means only or nothing but in Jamaica, but lots of in London.
Listening to learn
Music is a brilliant way into Patois if you use it well. Look up lyrics instead of guessing. Notice the grammar the artist uses, not just the slang. Compare a singer with a deejay on the same riddim and you'll hear the continuum between English-leaning and broad Patois in action. Then balance songs with ordinary speech, because nobody talks the way a deejay chats on a riddim. Learning Patois on your own suggests how to mix the two.
Questions people ask
Can I learn Patois from reggae and dancehall songs?
Songs are great for motivation, rhythm and vocabulary, but they aren't a complete teacher. Lyrics are stylised, packed with slang, and sometimes deliberately hard to follow, and singers often move closer to English than deejays do. Use songs alongside everyday speech, and look up lyrics rather than guessing.
What is the difference between a deejay and a selecta?
In Jamaican music, the selecta (selector) chooses and plays the records on a sound system. The deejay is the performer who chants, toasts or sings live over the riddim, closer to what hip-hop calls an MC. This is the reverse of how DJ is usually used elsewhere.
What does riddim mean?
A riddim is an instrumental track, the drum and bass pattern plus backing, that many different artists voice their own songs on. One popular riddim can carry dozens of songs, and a dancehall selecta can play several back to back. The word is the Patois pronunciation of rhythm.