I’d had this catchy song lodged in my memory for about 40 years without remembering who or what it was until one day it popped up on a reggae compilation I’dbought. (more…)

Harmony greats The Heptones helped put Coxsone Dodd’s legendary Studio One on the map as the home of Jamaican rocksteady and reggae. (more…)

Here’s an all-star double-bill – Horace Andy singing and Tapper Zukie toasting and a nice laid-back dub as a bonus. (more…)

Big Youth was one of the earliest and most distinctive toasters. Here he is teaming up with Horace Andy on one of his earliest hits, The Killer. (more…)

Delroy Wilson was the Cool Operator immortalised by The Clash. Here’s the song that earned him the nickname. (more…)

This is the first reggae tune I ever heard and probably the song that instilled a lifelong love of dub production. (more…)

U-Roy is one of the great toasters of Jamaican music, prefiguring the rappers who came along more than 20 years later. Here’s The Originator teaming up with John Holt. (more…)

Bob and Marcia took Nina Simone’s prototype Black Lives Matter anthem to the top five of the UK charts in April 1970. It’s just as relevant 50 years later. (more…)

Skinhead favourite Liquidator, now synonymous with football, started life as a reggae instrumental by Harry J Allstars, becoming a top ten hit in 1969.
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Count Matchuki was the original deejay. The founding father of toasting – and, by extension, the forefather of rap. (more…)