For 32 years, International Reggae Day – held annually on July 1st – has celebrated the culture, heritage, and music born on the island of Jamaica in the 1960s. It is a unique sound that has since spread across the globe, evolving to suit the tastes of every generation. After giving rise to ska and then rocksteady, the genre known as reggae emerged around 1968, quickly followed by its experimental, instrumental counterpart: dub. By the mid-1980s, Jamaica saw a shift toward the digital era with the use of early electronic instruments; this paved the way for modern dancehall, which in turn spawned various sub-genres such as reggaeton, dubstep, and, more recently, shatta.
France became a prime home for this music starting in the 1970s, just as reggae was gaining international reach and expanding beyond the Caribbean. French pioneers include Serge Gainsbourg, who traveled to Jamaica in 1979 to record and earned his first Gold Record with the album *Aux armes et cætera*. He was soon followed by Bernard Lavilliers and many other artists who popularized Caribbean sounds among French audiences. Today, France maintains a genuine love affair with the genre, evidenced by the multitude of active artists, labels, festivals, and sound systems.
To mark the International Reggae Day, we invite you to listen to our “made in France” selection, updated weekly in the “Oui Love Reggae” playlist. We also invite you to (re)discover some of our exclusive playlists curated by iconic artists of the genre, such as the late Sly Dunbar (May 10, 1952 – Jan. 26, 2026), Nuttea, King Daddy Yod, Tiwony, Dub Inc, Mo’Kalamity, Manudigital, and Jahyanai King.
