STORY · GLOBAL
Music beyond Kingston: a parish map of Jamaican sound
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Reggae's story is usually told through Kingston - but its roots and its stars are scattered across every parish.
From Burning Spear's St Ann's Bay to Peter Tosh's Belmont and Toots Hibbert's May Pen, Jamaican music is a map of parishes, not one city.
The island behind the capital
Kingston is where the records were pressed and the sound systems clashed, but the voices came from everywhere. Follow the coast road and the map fills with birthplaces: St Ann's Bay, where Marcus Garvey's town shaped the young Winston Rodney; Belmont on the far south-west, where Peter Tosh was born and is buried; and May Pen in Clarendon, cradle of Toots Hibbert.
The festival song tradition is a parish story too. Kent Village, Bog Walk produced Eric Donaldson, whose Cherry Oh Baby won the 1971 Festival Song and whose later titles made him the competition's most decorated voice. Islington in St Mary sent Capleton to Kingston; St Mary still sings that it is where the deejay 'comes from'.
The studios clustered in one city; the singers came from all fourteen parishes.
Older layers run deeper still. The Windward Maroons of Charles Town keep Kromanti drumming and the abeng; Port Morant in St Thomas safeguards Kumina; and the Nyabinghi ground at Scott's Pass holds the groundation drumming that fed reggae's heartbeat. Read together, these places are less a scatter of dots than a national instrument.