The Jamaica Music Museum at the Institute of Jamaica on East Street in Downtown Kingston is the country's principal repository for the physical history of Jamaican popular music — covering the full arc from mento and kumina through ska, rocksteady, reggae, and dancehall with original instruments, recording equipment, photographs, and documents.
The museum is particularly strong on the era before reggae reached international audiences — the late 1950s through mid-1970s period when the music industry was essentially a Kingston cottage industry centred on a handful of recording studios, record shops, and sound system operators. The turntables, amplifiers, and custom-built speaker boxes on display are not reproductions; they are the actual equipment used to produce and play the music. For anyone seriously interested in the social history of popular music, this is one of the more important small museums in the Americas.