Bob Marley

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• Top 6 Reggae Artists of All Time

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• Peter Tosh

  Peter Tosh co-founded the Wailers alongside Bob Marley and Bunny Wailer in the early 1960s, and his own more directly confrontational, politically militant songwriting style — particularly on his 1976 solo album Legalize It, an explicit call for marijuana decriminalization — distinguished his solo career from Marley's somewhat more broadly accessible material. His outspoken advocacy for Pan-Africanism and his direct criticism of South African apartheid and other systems of racial oppression made Tosh one of reggae's most overtly political voices, willing to address controversial subjects more directly than some of his contemporaries in the genre. Tosh survived a brutal 1978 assault by Jamaican police, who beat him severely while he was in custody, an incident that became a significant flashpoint in his ongoing public criticism of Jamaican law enforcement and government policy throughout the remainder of his career. His 1987 murder during a home invasion robbery in Jamaica cut short a career that had continued to produce politically pointed reggae well after his departure from the Wailers, and Tosh's more militant, explicitly political songwriting approach has remained influential among subsequent generations of politically conscious reggae and dancehall artists.

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• Jimmy Cliff

  Jimmy Cliff starred in and provided much of the soundtrack for 1972's The Harder They Come, a Jamaican film that became internationally influential in introducing reggae music to audiences well beyond Jamaica and the Caribbean, particularly in the United States and United Kingdom. His songs "The Harder They Come" and "You Can Get It If You Really Want," both featured prominently in the film, became international hits that helped establish reggae as a commercially viable genre for global audiences years before Bob Marley's own international breakthrough later in the decade. Cliff's musical style incorporated a broader range of influences than some of his contemporaries, blending reggae with soul, gospel, and pop songwriting sensibilities in a way that gave his music a somewhat different, more crossover-friendly sound than the more strictly roots-reggae approach of artists like Peter Tosh. His continued international touring and recording across more than five decades, along with his role in The Harder They Come specifically, established Cliff as one of the foundational figures in bringing reggae to global prominence, and he remains one of only a small number of reggae artists inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

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• Toots Hibbert

  Toots Hibbert, frontman of Toots and the Maytals, is widely credited with coining the term "reggae" itself in his band's 1968 song "Do the Reggay," one of the earliest recorded uses of the word to describe the emerging musical style that would go on to become one of the most globally significant genres to originate from Jamaica. His gospel-influenced, soulful vocal style, developed from singing in church as a child, gave Toots and the Maytals a sound distinct from some of their more strictly roots-reggae contemporaries, incorporating American soul and R&B influences alongside traditional Jamaican ska and rocksteady rhythms. The band's 1972 song "Pressure Drop," later covered by numerous other artists across multiple genres, became one of the most widely recognized and frequently covered reggae songs outside Jamaica, helping introduce the group's sound to international audiences during reggae's broader global emergence in the early 1970s. Toots continued actively recording and touring for more than five decades, including a 2020 Grammy-winning album released shortly before his death later that same year, giving him one of the longest sustained active careers of any major reggae artist and cementing his role as a foundational figure whose contributions predate even Bob Marley's own rise to international fame.

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• Burning Spear

  Burning Spear, the stage name of Winston Rodney, built a reputation as one of reggae's most explicitly historically and politically conscious artists, with his music frequently addressing Pan-Africanism, Jamaican history, and the legacy of figures like Marcus Garvey, the Jamaican-born Black nationalist leader whose philosophy deeply influenced Rastafarian belief. His 1975 album Marcus Garvey, dedicated specifically to Garvey's political legacy, is widely regarded as one of the most significant roots-reggae albums ever recorded, reflecting Burning Spear's consistent focus on historically grounded, politically substantive songwriting throughout his career. Rodney's deep, resonant vocal delivery and his band's heavily percussive, bass-driven instrumental style became closely associated with the "roots reggae" subgenre specifically, a style emphasizing spiritual and political themes over the more romantically or socially oriented lyrics found in some other strands of reggae. Burning Spear has won multiple Grammy Awards for Best Reggae Album across a recording career spanning more than five decades, and his sustained focus on historically and politically substantive songwriting has made him one of the most consistently respected figures within reggae's roots tradition specifically, distinct from the genre's more pop-crossover-oriented artists.

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• Lee "Scratch" Perry

  Lee "Scratch" Perry was one of the most significant record producers in reggae history, and his pioneering studio techniques at his own Black Ark Studio in Kingston during the 1970s are widely credited with helping create dub, an experimental, remix-focused subgenre built around stripping down and reconstructing existing reggae recordings using innovative studio effects. Perry produced some of Bob Marley and the Wailers' most significant early recordings before Marley's international breakthrough, and his innovative use of tape delay, reverb, and unconventional mixing techniques directly influenced the development of dub, a genre whose production techniques later proved foundational to hip-hop, electronic music, and remix culture more broadly. His eccentric, often surreal public persona and unconventional studio methods — reportedly including burying microphones in the ground and using unusual objects as recording tools — made Perry one of reggae's most singularly idiosyncratic figures, distinct from the more straightforwardly commercial approach of many of his contemporaries. Perry's own 1983 fire that destroyed his Black Ark Studio, an event some accounts suggest he may have set himself during a period of personal and psychological turmoil, ended one of the most creatively significant studio operations in reggae history, though Perry continued producing and recording music internationally for decades afterward until his death in 2021.

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• Naftule's Dream

  Naftule's Dream grew out of the Shirim Klezmer Orchestra, a Boston-area group that had already been playing traditional klezmer for 14 years before Newton, Massachusetts-born clarinetist Glenn Dickson and accordionist-songwriter Michael McLaughlin spun off a more adventurous, improvisation-focused outlet from within it. The band released two records on their own, "Search for the Golden Dreydl" in 1997 and "Smash, Clap" in 1998, before going on to record three further albums for composer John Zorn's Tzadik label under its Radical Jewish Culture series, a significant marker of downtown-avant-garde credibility. The Boston Globe praised the group for fusing "klezmer music, Phish-like improvisation, and radical Yiddish poetry," a description that captured how directly the band pushed past traditional acoustic klezmer instrumentation and arrangement. Their combination of their roots in a 14-year-old traditional klezmer orchestra and their three albums on John Zorn's boundary-pushing Tzadik label has made Naftule's Dream one of the most musically adventurous bands in the klezmer revival movement.

• Brave Old World

  Brave Old World formed in 1989 with members drawn from California, Chicago, New York, and Berlin, an unusually international lineup for a klezmer band, originally featuring clarinetist Joel Rubin, drummer Ben Bazyler, multi-instrumentalist Stu Brotman (a former member of 1960s rock band Kaleidoscope and a sideman for Canned Heat), keyboardist Alan Bern, and violinist Michael Alpert. Rubin was later replaced by Kurt Bjorling, musical director of the Chicago Klezmer Ensemble since 1984, bringing another deeply credentialed klezmer specialist into the lineup. The Washington Post called Brave Old World "the revival's first supergroup," noting that "every player is a virtuoso," and the band won first prize at the 1992 International Klezmer Festival in Safed, Israel, a significant early validation from within the genre's own community. Their combination of their genuinely international, virtuoso-level lineup and their 1992 Safed festival win has made Brave Old World one of the most artistically respected bands in the klezmer revival.

• Kapelye

  Kapelye was assembled in 1979 when ethnomusicologist Henry Sapoznik organized a group of musicians to perform at a klezmer lecture at Temple Beth-El in Providence, Rhode Island; the November 18, 1979 debut went well enough that the musicians agreed on the spot to keep performing together as a full-time band. The group took its name from the Yiddish word for "a band" and began actively researching and collecting turn-of-the-century klezmer recordings, drawing several members, including fiddler and vocalist Michael Alpert, from the overlapping Balkan music community. Their 1981 debut album, "Future & Past," mixed traditional Yiddish folk ballads with labor and political anthems and songs pulled directly from Yiddish theater, and the band followed it with "Levine & His Flying Machine" in 1985 and "Chicken" in 1987, before "Old-Time Jewish American Radio" became their most successful release. Their combination of Sapoznik's foundational archival research and their genre-launching 1981 debut album has made Kapelye one of the most historically significant bands in klezmer's modern revival movement.

• Andy Statman

  Andy Statman, born in New York City in 1950, started on banjo and guitar at 12 before switching to mandolin, which he studied briefly under lifelong friend David Grisman, and by 1970 he was playing in the experimental bluegrass group Country Cooking, followed by stints with David Bromberg's band. In 1975, Statman sought out klezmer clarinet legend Dave Tarras and became his protégé; Tarras wrote melodies specifically for him and eventually bequeathed Statman four of his own clarinets, deliberately passing the older master's living klezmer lineage directly to him. His late-1970s album "Jewish Klezmer Music" became a touchstone recording for that decade's klezmer revival, released alongside his mandolin-focused "Flatbush Waltz," and the National Endowment for the Arts later named him a National Heritage Fellow, the nation's highest honor in the traditional arts. His combination of his direct mentorship under Dave Tarras and his rare parallel mastery of klezmer clarinet and bluegrass mandolin has made Statman one of the most historically important figures in klezmer's modern revival.

• Giora Feidman

  Giora Feidman was born in 1936 in Buenos Aires to a family of klezmer musicians spanning his father, grandfather, and great-grandfather, and by 18 he was already leading clarinetist of the orchestra at Argentina's Teatro Colón before joining the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra in 1957 on the recommendation of conductor Paul Kletzki. He played with the Israel Philharmonic until 1974, then launched a solo career and was crowned "the King of Klezmer" in New York already in the 1970s, well before klezmer's broader American revival movement took hold in subsequent decades. In the early 1990s, Steven Spielberg invited Feidman to record alongside violinist Itzhak Perlman on the score for "Schindler's List," and Feidman's solo clarinet became a defining voice on that soundtrack, which went on to win the Academy Award. His combination of a multi-generational klezmer family lineage and his solo clarinet performance on the Oscar-winning "Schindler's List" score has made Feidman one of the most significant ambassadors for klezmer music worldwide.