I saw a documentary on Bob Marley where they were interviewing some of the early ska guys. One was asked how they came up with it, and he said, well, we just couldn’t play very well and the time was off, but it sounded good anyway, so we kept doing it.
In that vein, I read a (possibly apocryphal) story that one of the reasons for reggae’s popularity was that the rhythm of its music closely approximated the beating of the human heart.