Origins of Riddims

The word ‘riddim’ is the Jamaican patois spelling of rhythm. As such, a riddim is defined as a movement or procedure with uniform or patterned recurrence of a beat, accent, or the like.

Going as far back as 1970, reggae music whose main proponent being dancehall has relied heavily on the riddim culture phenomenon. While a dancehall song consists of a deejay singing (voicing over) a riddim, the riddim is not exclusive to that song, a characteristic not applicable to other genres.