A cave in the hills of the Echo Park district on the edge of Downtown Los Angeles holds an unlikely treasure: A collection that is likely the world’s most comprehensive archive of reggae music, photographs, memorabilia and ephemera.

The reggae cave is actually the home of Roger Steffens, an eccentric, wiry-haired white man who has dedicated a career to recording and preserving reggae’s history in the U.S. A lot of that history — thousands, upon thousands of reggae- and Rasta-related items — are nestled with care in Steffens hillside home, which offers a panoramic view that takes in the city’s center, the Hollywood sign, and even the Pacific Ocean on a clear day.

The archive takes up the entire second floor of the house, where all things reggae — posters, tapestries, buttons, drawings and photographs flashing red, gold, black and green amongst walls of records, tapes and CDs — can be found. Steffens acquired, photographed, collected and archived every show, tape, film, CD, flier, drawing, poster, you name it, that he came across for the past 37 years. He’s received a trove of memorabilia from friends and colleagues around the world as well. His cache includes to what he describes as the largest Bob Marley archive in the world.

Roger Steffen Steffens says that his love of reggae began when he read an article in Rolling Stone magazine back in 1973. The piece, written by Michael Thomas, delved into reggae, a musical form that remained practically unknown in the U.S. at the time. Steffens says the article intrigued and inspired him. He became determined to find this “new” sound, and soon purchased a used copy of Bob Marley’s Catch a Fire, which is now autographed by the band and stored in the archive.

Steffens lived in Berkeley, California, at the time. That’s where he became one of the first non-Jamaican music buffs to make the reggae scene in the U.S. He met fellow reggae enthusiast Hank Holmes a year later in Los Angeles, and the two created a radio show. It took four years and a few failed attempts to broadcast on various Los Angeles-based radio stations before the pair landed a permanent slot on Los Angeles’ KCRW in 1979. Their Reggae Beat became known as “the most popular non-commercial radio program in Los Angeles,” according to the LA Weekly, eventually expanding to reach the airwaves in Santa Barbara, Palm Springs and San Diego.

Reggae Beat started off with a bang, hosting Bob Marley as its first musical guest. Steffens provided hand-drawn sleeves for archival tapes of every show for Reggae Beat’s eight-year run, including guest appearances. A musician named Chili Charles began filming live performances on Reggae Beat, starting in 1980 — and those sessions are also part of Steffens’ archive in Echo Park.

The audio tapes and films were later meshed together to form a television show called LA Reggae, a compilation of live performances on Reggae Beat. Steffens says that he attended “virtually every reggae show in L.A. during the 1980s.” He adds that he captured the music at most of them by plugging into the mixing boards to make live recordings for his archives.

CC Smith joined the Reggae Beat team in 1982, creating a newsletter with a concert calendar as a resource for reggae shows that were still few and far between. The newsletter immediately drew 300 subscription requests, and the high demand led to the birth of what was initially known as Reggae Beat Magazine. The publication later evolved into African and Reggae Beat Magazine — and became known simply as Beat Magazine in the late 80s. The magazine published for more than 20 years before ceasing in December of 2009.

All of Steffens’ work and his wide connection in the reggae world have brought high-level recognition in the music industry. The Recording Academy has acknowledged his efforts, and in 1984 the directors of the organization asked him to play a key role in creating a reggae category for their annual Grammy wards. He remains the chairman of the Academy’s Grammy Committee.

In the same year Reggae Beat began its broadcast in 1979, Marley invited Steffens to the singer’s Survival tour. Also along was Bruce Talamon, who was the first photographer to capture what would become a cover photo of Marley for a U.S. magazine. Talamon and Steffens would later go on to work together on Spirit Dancer, a photographic and textual book of Bob Marley, as they knew him.

Steffens has written and edited many other books on reggae, and continues to give lectures on the subject. He is currently working on an autobiography of Bunny Wailer, a reggae legend — and the Wailer in the Bob Marley and the Wailers.

Meanwhile, Steffens says that he will not part with his archives without the confidence that his collection will remain in tact, although some transfers of portions of the archives to Jamaica has been discussed in the past. Currently partnered with the University of Southern California, Steffens has chosen to digitize his archives, and he says copies will eventually be sent to Jamaica.