Big Youth

Manley Augustus Buchanan, known to the world as Big Youth, came up through Kingston's sound-system culture in the early 1970s and became one of the defining voices of Jamaican deejay music.

Before rap had taken its modern form, Big Youth was toasting: chanting rhythm, culture and consciousness over the riddim. His landmark 1973 album Screaming Target stands as a defining recording of the Jamaican deejay era.

Across decades of recording and performing, his voice has carried Rastafari consciousness, social commentary, Jamaican culture and the energy of the sound system from Kingston to audiences around the world.

His cadence and approach to toasting became part of the lineage that links Jamaican deejay culture to later generations of dancehall and other global vocal styles. Artists, producers and historians still study it.

Onstage, Big Youth is more than a performance. He is a living chapter of Jamaican music history, connecting the foundations of roots reggae and sound-system culture with today's international reggae audience.