This course explores the folk and popular music as socio‐political, cultural and philosophical instruments and expressions in the making of the African Diaspora in the Americas. Within this historical context, the course examines, through popular Jamaican music (Ska, Rock Steady and Reggae) ideas of grass root Jamaicans about freedom, justice, human rights, power, the nature of the state, social and political behaviour since independence. It seeks to ascertain/measure the intellectual/ ideological contributions of grass root Jamaicans to the making/definition of freedom, justice, human rights etc. in the development of the Jamaican polity, as well as to establish that grass root Jamaicans are part of the tradition of subjected peoples the world over who have contributed to the making of freedom as one of the most important values.