ENTITY · GROUP
Folkes Brothers
Well supported
The Folkes Brothers were a Jamaican vocal group best known for "Oh Carolina" (1960), produced by Prince Buster and built on Count Ossie's Nyabinghi drumming - one of the first commercial recordings to bring Rastafari drum culture directly into a Jamaican pop record, years before Nyabinghi's influence on reggae was widely acknowledged.
At a glance
- Type
- group
- Confidence
- Well supported
- Era
- Open era →
Connections
Watch & listen
Debate & reception
How people argued about the music — praise, criticism and public debate. See all debate & reception →
commentary
"Oh Carolina" and the respectability of Rasta drumming
When the Folkes Brothers' 1960 single 'Oh Carolina' (produced by Prince Buster) put Count Ossie's Nyabinghi-style Rasta drumming onto a commercial record and Jamaican radio, it became a flashpoint. At a time when Rastafari was criminalized and socially despised, some in the anti-Rasta music establishment and broadcasting rejected the akete drums and chanting as disreputable 'jungle' primitivism tied to the stigmatized burru/kumina lineage; others later argued the record was the first to give the Rastafari movement a measure of mainstream respectability and to bring a suppressed African-derived music into the commercial mainstream. Grounded in the Jamaica Gleaner's 'Music Diaries' column on the drama of 'Oh Carolina' and Heather Augustyn's skabook account.
Stance: African/Rasta drumming as cultural affirmation vs. as disreputable primitivism unfit for radio