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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Big Youth

Artist. Reggae, dub

Active
1972-present
Sunrise
April 19, 1949, Kingston, Jamaica
Also known as
The Youthman

Manley Augustus Buchanan, who records as Big Youth, was the deejay who moved toasting away from crowd-hyping and toward Rastafarian preaching. He came up behind U-Roy and turned the form into something closer to sermon than patter.

Buchanan worked as a mechanic at the Kingston Sheraton before deejaying on Lord Tippertone's sound system in the early 1970s. On his records of mid-1972 he spoke, in the Rough Guide's words, "in a rather mumbled and indistinct manner." By the next summer his diction was much clearer, as if to emphasize the gravity of what he now had to say, and he had arrived at what the same writers call "a highly original chanting style," drawing phrases straight from the Bible on "I Pray Thee," his cut of the Abyssinians' "Satta Massa Gana." He named John Coltrane, Charlie Parker, and the Beatles among his influences, and his records moved between talking and singing and between wild fun and praise of Jah, and took other people's songs apart to rebuild them as his own. His forays into outright singing, the Rough Guide says, remain contentious, but self-produced albums like Natty Cultural Dread and Hit the Road Jack showed that "a deejay's records could be much more than adjuncts to popular vocals."

One evening in early 1973, on stage at Kingston's Carib Theatre, he pulled off his tam in the middle of a set and shook out his dreadlocks. An observer told Bradley that the hall went silent for a second or two and then erupted; nobody there had seen locks on such a stage before. He also wore red, green, and gold inlays in his front teeth.

Screaming Target (1973), produced by Gussie Clarke, is the record the reputation rests on: Big Youth over riddims drawn largely from Gregory Isaacs and Leroy Smart sides, addressing gun violence, poverty, and faith. "S.90 Skank," produced by Keith Hudson, was a hit built around the sound of a motorcycle and a warning about riding one too fast. By his own account he soon had seven records in the two Jamaican charts at once, and the producers came running for a conscious deejay record. He recorded further albums for Prince Tony Robinson and, from the summer of 1973, produced himself on the Negusa Nagast and Augustus Buchanan labels, usually with Earl "Chinna" Smith's Soul Syndicate; the Rough Guide says these four years of self-produced music "defined cultural toasting."

He appears in the 1978 film Rockers among the musicians around the protagonist Horsemouth.

Bradley says that "for five years he ruled." His style gave a lead to Dillinger, Jah Stitch, Trinity, and Clint Eastwood, and it dominated until Ranking Joe, U-Brown, General Echo, and Lone Ranger brought back U-Roy's; the Rough Guide reads the three-disc Natty Universal Dread as the best possible argument that he was the greatest deejay of the 1970s. He went on to cut "Marcus Did Warn Them" with Half Pint in the late 1980s and appeared on Beres Hammond's "Good Old Dance Hall Vibes" in 2003. He has continued to perform for five decades.

Last updated November 4, 2026

Connections

Notes

  1. Barrow and Dalton call him "the most influential talker" of the period and contrast his 1972 records with the Bible-drawn chanting of 1973, "not jive talking in the U-Roy/Dennis Alcapone manner": Steve Barrow and Peter Dalton, The Rough Guide to Reggae, 3rd ed. (London: Rough Guides, 2004), 187-88. Big Youth's own account of bringing Rasta themes from the sound systems onto record is in Lloyd Bradley, This Is Reggae Music: The Story of Jamaica's Music (New York: Grove Press, 2001), 290-92.
  2. Wikipedia, citing Dave Thompson, Reggae & Caribbean Music (2002), says he worked as a diesel mechanic at the Sheraton and was resident deejay on Lord Tippertone by 1970: "Big Youth," Wikipedia, accessed October 1, 2026, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Youth. Barrow and Dalton call him "the Lord Tippertone sound's top deejay": Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 187. Katz says Tippertone "launched the careers" of Big Youth and Doctor Alimantado in the early 1970s, and that he and Jah Stitch toasted together on the sound, "both employing an understated delivery and Rastafarian focus." David Katz, "'Original Raggamuffin' Jah Stitch, Pioneering Reggae Vocalist, Dies Aged 69," Guardian, May 2, 2019, https://www.theguardian.com/music/2019/may/02/original-raggamuffin-jah-stitch-pioneering-reggae-vocalist-dies-aged-69.
  3. Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 187-88.
  4. Bradley, This Is Reggae Music, 304.
  5. Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 189.
  6. Bradley, This Is Reggae Music, 288.
  7. Bradley describes "the red, green and gold inlays in his front teeth": Bradley, This Is Reggae Music, 290.
  8. Bradley says Gussie Clarke produced the album in 1972 (305) and dates its release to 1973 (486); he also calls it probably "the first big-selling album to have dreadlocks on the cover" (430): Bradley, This Is Reggae Music, 305, 486, 430. On the Gregory Isaacs, Leroy Smart, and Lloyd Parks rhythms, "Big Youth," Wikipedia. See also Tiggerlion, "Fifty Years of Screaming Target," The Afterword, March 11, 2023, https://theafterword.co.uk/fifty-years-of-screaming-target/. Katz credits the mix to Errol Thompson and calls it "one of the earliest internationally popular deejay albums." David Katz, "Errol Thompson," Guardian, December 9, 2004, https://www.theguardian.com/news/2004/dec/09/guardianobituaries.artsobituaries1.
  9. Big Youth recalled that he and Keith Hudson "take a bike in the studio" and that "the Honda S90 was the bike of the day": Bradley, This Is Reggae Music, 291. Bradley calls it "one of Jamaica's biggest-selling records of 1972": 304. Barrow and Dalton describe it as "a tribute to the Honda motorcycle": Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 118.
  10. Bradley, This Is Reggae Music, 291-92.
  11. On the Dread Locks Dread album for Prince Tony Robinson, Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 189; on his own labels, set up by the summer of 1973, 188.
  12. On his appearance in Rockers (1978), "Big Youth," Wikipedia.
  13. Bradley, This Is Reggae Music, 304; Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 188.
  14. Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 188.

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