Dancehall is a genre of Jamaican popular music that developed in the late 1970s, initially as a more sparse and less political and religious variant of reggae than the roots style that had dominated much of the 1970s.
In the mid-1980s, digital instrumentation became more prevalent, changing the sound considerably, with digital dancehall (or "ragga") becoming increasingly characterized by faster rhythms with little connection to earlier reggae rhythms.