Rocksteady (music genre)

Rocksteady is a music genre that originated in Jamaica around 1966. A successor to ska and a precursor to reggae, rocksteady was performed by Jamaican vocal harmony groups.

Rocksteady uses some of the musical elements of rhythm and blues (R&B), jazz, ska, African and Latin American drumming, and other genres. One of the most easily recognizable elements, as in ska, are offbeat rhythms; staccato chords played by a guitar and piano on the offbeats of the measure. The perceived tempo became slower with the development of rocksteady than it had been in ska and this led to a number of changes in the music. The guitar and piano players began to experiment with occasional accents around the basic offbeat pattern.