QUEENS OF THE DANCE
Women who changed the sound
Deejays, singers, dancers and pioneers — the women who shaped how Jamaican music sounds, moves and looks.
33 records · curated by the atlas editors
Jamaican singer whose 1964 hit "My Boy Lollipop" took ska/blue beat into the international pop charts.
person · Well supportedPhyllis DillonPhyllis Dillon was a Jamaican rocksteady and reggae singer recorded almost exclusively for Duke Reid's Treasure Isle label in the late 1960s, where her ballad style - including "Perfidia," a rocksteady rework of the classic Spanish-language standard - made her one of the genre's defining and most consistently celebrated women vocalists.
person · Well supportedHortense EllisJamaican singer active from ska/rocksteady into reggae, known for Studio One and other recordings.
person · Well supportedMarcia GriffithsMarcia Griffiths (born 23 November 1949, Kingston) is a Jamaican singer whose career spans rocksteady, roots reggae and dancehall. She recorded for Studio One, formed the hit duo Bob & Marcia with Bob Andy ("Young, Gifted and Black"), and was one of the I-Threes who provided backing harmonies for Bob Marley and the Wailers; she is also known internationally for "Electric Boogie," the song behind the Electric Slide dance.
person · Well supportedRita MarleyRita Marley (born Alpharita Constantia Anderson, 25 July 1946, Cuba) is a Cuban-Jamaican singer, the widow of Bob Marley, and a member of the I-Threes who backed the Wailers from the mid-1970s. Originally part of the vocal group the Soulettes, she recorded solo material including "One Draw" and has since managed the Marley musical legacy through the Bob Marley Foundation.
person · ProbableJudy MowattJudy Mowatt (born 1952) is a Jamaican reggae singer best known as one of the I-Threes, the female trio that sang backing vocals for Bob Marley and the Wailers from 1974. Her 1979/1980 solo album Black Woman is widely regarded as a landmark reggae album by a female artist and among the first reggae albums produced by a woman.
group · Well supportedAlthea & DonnaJamaican duo whose "Uptown Top Ranking" became a UK chart-topping reggae record.
person · Well supportedSister NancySister Nancy (Ophlin Russell) is a Jamaican deejay whose "Bam Bam" became one of dancehall's most widely circulated recordings.
person · ProbableLady GLady G is a Jamaican dancehall deejay and singer active from the 1980s onward, part of the small but consistent line of women deejays who built careers alongside dancehall's male-dominated mainstream.
person · Well supportedLady SawLady Saw (Marion Hall) is a Jamaican dancehall artist who became one of the genre's most prominent women performers through the 1990s, known for explicit "slackness" lyrics that pushed back against dancehall's largely male-dominated performance space, before later moving toward gospel music under her birth name.