This article was updated on Nov. 29.

Wa-ka, wa-ka is the sound of the first riffs that open up Bob Marley’s “Stir It Up.” Sister Nancy’s “Bam Bam” begins with slow-paced horns that give way to her cool cadence. Drums pause with the guitars at the top of Peter Tosh’s “Legalize It.”

It’s reggae: smooth, lovely, cool, collected, classic.

Jamaica, where the sound first gave a voice to the oppressed and the hopeful, applied to add reggae to Unesco’s list of the intangible cultural heritage of humanity, and the genre received the honor on Thursday, along with several other new additions.