U-Roy (Jamaica)

FMM’s illustrated history of reggae continues with U-Roy, the great master of “toasting”, the artistic DJ style that granted him a place among the elite of Jamaica’s music.

July 31, 2010 | Beach Stage | 02h30

A Jamaican in a studio is a classic scene of 20th century music; this is the story of one more inventor and his machines under the heat of the prodigious island. Born in 1942, U-Roy, a.k.a. The Originator, is the most important name in “toasting”, a DJ style that roughly consists in singing over the record spinning on the turntable. It may not seem much, but U-Roy transformed it into an art form and changed forever the status of the DJ in reggae, also contributing to the evolution of rap in the United States. U-Roy starts his career dee-jaying in the street “sound systems”, popular in Jamaica in the Fifties and Sixties. At the end of the Sixties, he becomes the main DJ of King Tubby, the sound engineer to whose imagination many point the creation of dub and most of U-Roy’s creation will be in this style. U-Roy records his first single, “Earth’s Rightful Ruler”, with Peter Tosh, for producer Lee Perry, but what grants him eternity in the honorific order of Jamaican music are his late Seventies and early Eighties records. After Black Uhuru feat. Sly & Robby (2001), The Skatalites (2003) and Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry (2009), FMM’s illustrated history of reggae turns another page.

http://www.myspace.com/uroyreggae

U-Roy: lead vocals
Winston George Bowen aka Bopee: guitar
Lloyd George Denton aka Obiah: keyboards
Derrick Adolphus Stewart: drums
Daniel Clifford Thompson aka Axeman: bass
Winsome Sydnia Benjamin: backing vocals
Richard Samuel Marcus Robinson: backing vocals