World of Jamaican Music

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An illustrated map of the creators of Jamaican music and how they are connected.

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Barry Brown

Artist. Roots, reggae, dancehall

Active
1970s-2004
Sunrise
Kingston
Sunset
May 29, 2004, Kingston

Barry Brown was among the most impassioned of the youthman singers who carried cultural lyrics into the dancehall at the turn of the 1980s; his rough-and-ready style, the Rough Guide says, anticipated the dancehall explosion.

He came up on local sounds in the 1970s and got his break with Bunny Lee, who recorded him at his best on the angry "Politician," over Horace Andy's "Money Money" riddim, and on "Step It Up Youthman." At Channel One at the end of the decade he cut "Far East," a plea for peace in the ghetto over a reworking of Roland Alphonso's "Jah Shakey"; it became so well known that "Far East" turned into a common name for the riddim, and it stood with Junior Byles's "Fade Away" and John Holt's "Up Park Camp" among the studio's protest songs.

Around 1980 he recorded for nearly every producer of the new dancehall. For Henry "Junjo" Lawes he sang "Give Israel Another Try"; for Sugar Minott's Black Roots, "Not So Lucky" and Roots Lovers; for Joe Gibbs, "Dem a Fight"; for the Synmoie brothers' Thrillseekers, "Two House Department"; for Jah Thomas's Midnight Rock, a showcase album; and for Prince Tony Robinson, Linval Thompson and Carlton Patterson. "Mafia" (1978) and "Mr CID" were dancehall favorites, and he also ran his own Jabba Roots label. The Thompson sessions, made at Channel One with the Roots Radics and Scientist, show a high, breathy delivery that recalled Thompson's own. Coxsone Dodd recorded the album Roots and Culture with him.

He suffered from asthma and in later years from drug abuse. He lost his life on May 29, 2004, in a fall at a Kingston recording studio, weeks after Dodd's sunset.

Last updated October 14, 2026

Connections

Notes

  1. Steve Barrow and Peter Dalton, The Rough Guide to Reggae, 3rd ed. (London: Rough Guides, 2004), 153, 267.
  2. Angus Taylor, "Barry Brown: The Thompson Sound 1979-82," United Reggae, April 28, 2014, https://unitedreggae.com/articles/n1473/042814/barry-brown-the-thompson-sound-1979-82. Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 153-54. The Rough Guide notes that "International Step" on one Bunny Lee compilation is "Step It Up Youthman" retitled.
  3. Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 158, 298; Lloyd Bradley, This Is Reggae Music: The Story of Jamaica's Music (New York: Grove Press, 2001), 357, 464.
  4. Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 243, 248, 267, 274-75, 283-84, 286, 288; Taylor, "Barry Brown." On Robinson and Patterson, see their entries.
  5. Taylor, "Barry Brown."
  6. "Singer Barry Brown Is Dead," Jamaica Observer, June 1, 2004, https://jamaicaobserver.com/2004/05/31/singer-barry-brown-is-dead.
  7. "Singer Barry Brown Is Dead," Jamaica Observer, June 1, 2004, https://jamaicaobserver.com/2004/05/31/singer-barry-brown-is-dead. Taylor calls it "a head injury under mysterious circumstances." Taylor, "Barry Brown."

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