Top 194 Reggae Quotes & Sayings

The most inspiring drummer for me is Stewart Copeland from The Police. The Police are the first band I can remember really liking, and Copeland is a guy who was playing in sort of a rock band, or a rock-pop band, but he didn't want to do the traditional kind of rock drumbeat. He was doing all these kind of reggae rhythms, and the reggae style is almost an exact opposite of the rock mold of drumming.

Reggae, oh man. It's the ultimate music. The positivity. The musicality. The whole cultural expressionism of it. The danceability. Just the cool factor. The melody factor. Some of it comes from a religious place. If there were a competition of who makes the best religious music, it would definitely be the Rastafarian reggae.

I have a satellite radio show called 'The Legends of Reggae.' It's a cool way to branch out and do other things. I'm paying respect to the legends of reggae.

In reggae I have a model of artistic excellence and possibility that is challenging and inspiring. The poem remains a demanding thing - an object to be understood and shaped into my own sense of self, the same is true of the play, the novel, the short story. Yet, for some reason, I approach these existing genres with the kind of confidence that the reggae artist approaches any song floating around out there.

Reggae music don't really focus on one thing, you know. If reggae music is speaking about the struggle of people, and the suffering, it don't mean black people. It mean people in general.

You have to be logical and use international words so people can relate to reggae music. I'm the inventor of the word reggae music. I'm the one who coined the word reggae. So, whatever I put out on my label - my label called D & F Music - it has to be positive.

I really like the reggae concepts like the culture vibe. They speak on everything that's going on, they don't have limits. They speak on politics, they speak on life, they speak on the troubles of poverty, everything. The message, the melodies and the concepts of reggae music are unbelievable.

Reggae is my heart ? reggae is my soul

Reggae is a culture. It's easy, laid-back.

The song 'Gave It All Away' has a reggae sound.

We found that if you played a bunch of punk singles in a row, people would dance like crazy and then get worn out and go somewhere else in the house. And if you played reggae all the time, people ended up leaning against the walls and nodding their head. But if you mixed it up, the floor got more and more packed, and the energy from the two types of music seemed to feed into each other, and the adrenaline from the punk, and the seductive sway of the reggae seemed to fit together.

I do have very solid reggae roots based on the fact that I'm Jamaican, and so that is a part of myself; even if I never do all reggae, it has to come out in some way because that's who I am.

I grew up with reggae music.

Dub and reggae... I play that a lot around the house.

My parents are from Jamaica, and I love reggae music.

Reggae music is a music of integrity; reggae's consciousness was built on a message. My music speaks of love, equality and spirituality, and I would hope that one finds this integrity in my music.

Reggae is not music I know inside-out.

Reggae music isn't Jewish, but a lot of the ideas are.

One of my good friends said, in a reggae riddim, don't jump in the water if you can't swim.

Reggae was always a passion of mine. I used to say in interviews that I would love to do a reggae album. But it consumed my life being a hip-hop artist and being Heavy D, which I'm happy and proud of.

My mom used to always play hip-hop around the crib, but moreso than that, she played reggae, and I grew up on reggae music more than I grew up on hip-hop.

I could never settle down into a reggae band, that's too bizarre.

I grew up with reggae. Reggae is like family. I know it, and there's a type of love and familiarity, but sometimes you want to hang out with other people.

I love a lot of reggae, but Ive never had the opportunity to play with any reggae guys.

Reggae is definitely a natural influence. Even living in Southern California, near the water, you get that reggae feel.

I feel positive about what I do. And, whoever is doing reggae, they have to have positive words and no negativity. They have to be positive. Yes, if you call it reggae, and it is negative words, it is not reggae.

For me, reggae music and its aesthetic are touchstones in both simple and complex ways. Reggae's capacity to be a folk music that is created in a wholly modern context of the recording studio (and sometimes that is the sole performance space) is riddled with the kinds of contradictory impulses that we have come to expect from the post-modern. I revel in this, for it gives me, shall I say, permission.

I can put a hip-hop beat to reggae. That is, I can have real reggae in the drums and in the rhythm, and on top of it I can put The Rolling Stones' feeling, anyone's feeling on top. Nobody has ever done this before, man.

I love reggae music; reggae music's like my go-to.

I like listening to reggae, hip hop, ragga and R&B when I am skipping.

The big change was reggae and hip-hop, which came along after Split Enz had started. When Bob Marley first visited New Zealand, he lit a fuse that is still burning very brightly. The Maori people particularly honor reggae music in a very big way. So there is a strong reggae scene and a strong hip-hop scene, especially among Samoans. There's still plenty of quirky stuff around. No one expects to make much money here, so it definitely does encourage an underground sense.

My African heritage is a part of reggae music roots, and the concept is that the album, 'Revelation Part 1: The Root of Life' is a tribute to roots reggae music. The fruit is what blossoms into different colors and shades, but the root has to stand predominant.

I find reggae is really nice in the morning.

I have physical problems with listening to reggae. It's weird, I don't know why. It doesn't fit the way my heart pounds, and I feel very bad when I hear it. I have a neighbor--she's a waitress who comes home every night at four in the morning and she plays reggae very loud. I hate that. I can't sleep and I can't wake up either to that music.

I don't watch TV. Only while I'm doing it do I see it, really. So I don't know anything. I only know old reggae artists. So that's my thing. Old reggae artists and martial arts.

Younger people are discovering my work, even though my reggae is not like theirs.

People are like, 'What do you mean you don't listen to 115 different types of music?'. You can't just listen to The Smiths anymore. But then there are plenty of people that do only listen to five bands and six albums and that's it. My playlists are massively varied. There's never a theme throughout, it's never like everything is based in funk or based in reggae or whatever. It's 210BPM gabber-style techno and 40BPM reggae in the same list and it's like, yeah, they work.

Reggae is vile.

I listen to rap, reggae, Nirvana and Guns N' Roses.

I listen to a lot of reggae.

My father was interested in bringing reggae music to the entire world.

When you scratch the soul of hip-hop, you find R&B and funk but also reggae.

Reggae is music of love. It has joy and pain, but it feels good.

I'm not a big reggae dude. I have maybe two other reggae albums.

I love a lot of reggae, but I've never had the opportunity to play with any reggae guys.

Reggae is my heart since I was a kid. I love Reggae music.

If reggae comes from another country, you can have the relationship to reggae that I have to rock. But it's something I grew up with. It's probably something I appreciate more now. In the '80s, I was all about New Wave and synth pop - New Order and Depeche Mode and Eurythmics and Michael Jackson and tons and tons and tons of Prince.

I've always been a huge reggae fan.

I'm definitely trying to incorporate a Caribbean and reggae element.

I feel good to know that they recognize the potential of reggae music. And they are exposing it to the world, letting the world hear how beautiful reggae music can be.

If you listen to all my earlier stuff, it wasn't 'authentic reggae,' so to speak.

We won't be in any reggae publications or websites.

In New Orleans, people are still influenced by one another. You got these bands that play every week on Frenchmen Street, and on their breaks, they might go see the reggae band that's right next door. You might get the musicians from the reggae band to sit in with the brass musicians. Everyone is having fun.

One of the first places where I started to respond to song lyrics was in reggae music. A lot of what I was responding to were references to the Old Testament. It was not that I had to adapt the lyrics to the sound. Reggae and the Old Testament are bound up together. There wasn't anything that I had to do.

Reggae must be lived, not played. It is a lifebeat everytime, mon

I've always been into music. I used to DJ. I used to mix reggae and that. I used to be into reggae hard. Well first it was rap, then reggae, then rap again, then rap and reggae. But I was always DJing out my window for the whole estate. Everyone used to sit outside and all and listen. And I used to be running rhythms in that.

The really cool thing about reggae music is that I can get away with saying spiritual things as a reggae influenced artist that I couldn't get away with saying as a rock artist. Reggae has such spiritual roots and people almost expect to hear spiritual things.

I'm an island boy, so I love my reggae and soca music.

The Police, they were the guys that were like the gateway to the mainstream. In England, there was a very strong reggae movement that was going on. Anything that was happening in reggae happened out of England. They were brilliant. They could spot a sound that was cool, the 'it' sound.

Twelve years ago me and Allanah became really sick of writing pop songs, ... Eventually we dug a grave for the Thompson Twins, pushed them in there, and then moved to New Zealand. Before that I'd lived for a long time in south London where reggae was the music of the streets around me. You'd hear it booming out of people's windows and shops, and you could buy great old reggae singles for 50p (NZ1.30) in second hand shops. I'd always loved that sound, so soon after we got here I started making electronic dub records with my mate Rakai Karaitiana as International Observer.