Reggae Trivia
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50 free Reggae trivia questions with answers — music quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This reggae trivia quiz covers the music of Jamaica from the sound systems of 1950s Kingston to the digital riddims of dancehall. The easy questions are the ones any fan can answer: which island the genre comes from, the band that first sang the word 'reggay', the religion the music is bound up with, and the film that carried it to the world in 1972. Then it gets deeper: the two genres that came before reggae and why the tempo slowed, the guitar chop called the skank, the label known as the Motown of Jamaica, the truck that named Trojan Records, the first reggae songs to top the US charts, the producer who built and burned the Black Ark, the melodica master of dub, the unicycle-riding Wailer, the 1985 hit that made rhythms digital, and the year UNESCO listed reggae as intangible cultural heritage. Every answer was checked against encyclopaedia entries on reggae, ska, rocksteady, dub, dancehall and the artists themselves before publishing, and the supporting sentence is stored with each question. If you enjoy this one, try our Bob Marley, Jamaica and Caribbean quizzes next.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Bob Marley's 'No Woman, No Cry' recalls a government yard in which neighbourhood?
Trench Town
Trench Town was also home to Vincent Ford, who ran a soup kitchen there; Marley is said to have given him the song's writing credit so the royalties could support him.
Q 02Which Jamaican group's 1968 single, spelt 'Reggay', was the first song with the genre's name in its title?
Toots and the Maytals
Toots and the Maytals called it 'Do the Reggay'; Toots Hibbert said he took the word from 'streggae', street slang for someone looking raggedy.
Q 03Which genre came immediately before reggae in Jamaica, slower than ska and with more romantic lyrics?
Rocksteady
Rocksteady lasted barely two years, yet slowing ska down pushed the bass line to the front, a trait reggae kept.
Q 04What is the name for the short, scratchy offbeat guitar chop that defines reggae?
The skank
The skank descends from ska's offbeat guitar chop, which imitated the boogie-woogie piano vamp of New Orleans rhythm and blues.
Q 05Reggae is closely associated with which Afrocentric religion that emerged in Jamaica in the 1930s?
Rastafari
Rastafari is the movement reggae grew out of, and the music's worldwide success, led by Bob Marley, carried the faith far beyond the island.
Q 06Birmingham reggae band UB40 took its name from what?
An unemployment benefit form
An unemployment benefit form, the UB40, was what the band's founders had just signed on with when someone suggested it as a name.
Q 07Bob Marley claimed the word reggae came from a Spanish term meaning what?
The king's music
The king's music was Marley's story; dictionaries instead trace reggae, with a 'perhaps', to rege-rege, Jamaican English for ragged clothes or a quarrel.
Q 08Ska became the soundtrack to which Jamaican milestone of 1962?
Independence from Britain
Independence from Britain arrived that year, and ska's energetic rhythms caught the optimism, becoming the music of choice for young Jamaicans.
Q 09Which Jamaican dancehall star won the 2004 reggae Grammy for Dutty Rock, the album with 'Get Busy'?
Sean Paul
Sean Paul first represented Jamaica in the pool, making the national swimming and water polo teams at 13 before music took over.
Q 10Which American band took 'The Tide Is High', a 1967 song by Jamaica's Paragons, to number one in 1980?
Blondie
Blondie's Debbie Harry found the song on a compilation tape in London and asked the Specials to back her on it; they turned her down, so her own band recorded it instead.
Q 11Which 1969 Desmond Dekker hit about hard times in Jamaica became the first reggae song to top the UK chart?
Israelites
Israelites made a star of a former welder who had worked alongside the young Bob Marley, and its success opened a worldwide audience to the reggae acts who followed.
Q 12Lee 'Scratch' Perry launched his own label in 1968 with 'People Funny Boy', a satirical attack on whom?
His former boss
His former boss, the producer Joe Gibbs, hit back with 'People Grudgeful', an answer record built on the very same rhythm.
Q 13Improvised rhythmic vocals over records by deejays such as U-Roy and Big Youth are known as what?
Toasting
Q 21Which instrumental group served as Coxsone Dodd's house band in the mid-1960s, backing the early Wailers?
The Skatalites
The Skatalites lost their trombonist and composer Don Drummond after he killed his girlfriend; he was confined to an asylum and died there.
Q 22Which 1972 film starring Jimmy Cliff introduced Jamaican music to cinema audiences abroad?
The Harder They Come
The Harder They Come had its cast speak their natural Jamaican patois, because the director wanted the island's hardship, not its tourist side, to look real.
Q 23In the lyrics of roots reggae, which ancient city's name stands for the oppressive Western world?
Babylon
Toasting took U-Roy from the sound systems to the studio, and in 1970 his singles held the top three places on the Jamaican chart at once.
Q 14Which American singer's 1968 hit 'Hold Me Tight' was among the first Jamaican-made records to reach the US top ten?
Johnny Nash
Johnny Nash had lived in Jamaica and befriended the unknown Bob Marley, whose song 'Stir It Up' he took into the British charts in 1972.
Q 15Which 1968 Beatles song is cited as an early example of reggae influence in rock and pop?
Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da
Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da was Paul McCartney's take on the Jamaican sounds then filling British clubs; its market trader Desmond is said to be a nod to Desmond Dekker.
Q 16Which 1977 album did Bob Marley record in London after surviving a shooting at his home in Jamaica?
Exodus
Exodus followed a wounded Marley's decision to play the concert he had promised just two days after the shooting, and then to leave Jamaica for London.
Q 17Millie Small's 1964 international smash was a ska cover of which song?
My Boy Lollipop
My Boy Lollipop was at first treated as a novelty record, yet her producer credited it with taking ska international: it sold in the millions and sent her touring the world.
Q 18Which label, founded in Jamaica by Chris Blackwell, partnered with Trojan on UK reggae?
Island Records
Island Records moved to London in 1962 and a decade later signed the Wailers, whose Catch a Fire took reggae to a global rock audience.
Q 19Trojan Records took its name from what?
A sound-system truck
A sound-system truck carried Duke Reid's gear to dances; Reid, a former lawman, wore his pistols to recording sessions.
Q 20Which Jamaican label, founded by Clement 'Coxsone' Dodd, cut the first recordings by Bob Marley and the Wailers?
Studio One
Studio One's first Wailers single, Simmer Down, told the ghetto's hot-tempered youths to cool off and became an overnight smash in Jamaica.
Babylon, where the Bible's exiles were held captive, became roots reggae's name for the West, casting people of African descent as exiles far from home.
Q 24Which 1984 greatest-hits album became the best-selling reggae album of all time?
Bob Marley's Legend
Bob Marley's Legend came out three years after he died, and he has become far better known since his death than he ever was in his lifetime.
Q 25Which rock guitarist's 1974 cover of 'I Shot the Sheriff' brought Marley to a wider audience?
Eric Clapton
Eric Clapton's cover spread Marley's fame across America, and within a year Marley scored his own first hit outside Jamaica.
Q 26Paul Simon recorded 'Mother and Child Reunion' with Jimmy Cliff's backing group in which Jamaican city?
Kingston
Kingston supplied the backing track before Simon had any words; he took the title from a chicken-and-egg dish on a Chinese restaurant menu.
Q 27Jimmy Cliff's cover of which 1972 chart-topper became a hit from the 1993 bobsled comedy Cool Runnings?
I Can See Clearly Now
I Can See Clearly Now topped the American chart in 1972 for the singer who wrote it; Cliff's remake for the film about Jamaica's bobsled team revived his own fame.
Q 28Which British DJ played reggae alongside punk at clubs like The Roxy in the late 1970s?
Don Letts
Don Letts played reggae at the Roxy because punk was so new that its bands had hardly released any records, and that is how the two scenes met.
Q 29Which softer, female-led reggae subgenre grew up in South London, exemplified by Janet Kay?
Lovers rock
Lovers rock began when London sound-system owners cut romantic ballads with young women singing; Janet Kay's 'Silly Games' took the sound to number two in Britain.
Q 30Which son of Bob Marley fronted the Melody Makers, the sibling band that won three reggae Grammys?
Ziggy
Ziggy Marley was 12 when he and his brother Stephen joined the musicians at their father's funeral and danced his stage steps.