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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Donovan Germain

Producer. Dancehall, reggae, roots

Active
1970s-present
Sunrise
March 7, 1952, Whitfield Town, Kingston, Jamaica
Also known as
Penthouse, Penthouse Records, Revolutionary Sounds

Donovan Germain is the producer who, in the Rough Guide's judgment, finally took King Jammy's place as Jamaica's leading record producer, from his Penthouse studio in Kingston.

He was born in Whitfield Town, Kingston, where a neighbor's sound system, El Toro, played almost every day; he went to the same high school as Gussie Clarke and Augustus Pablo. In the early 1970s he joined his mother in the United States. In New York he worked at Keith's Record Store, carrying the weekly shipments from Jamaica to the radio station, opened a record shop of his own at twenty, and distributed records for Clarke, Lloyd Campbell and Sonia Pottinger; Clarke and Campbell taught him to produce.

His Revolutionary Sounds label was run from New York, though the sessions were held in Kingston. It began with the vocal group Cultural Roots, backed by Sly and Robbie, whose "Mr Boss Man" became a steppers anthem, and it had a British hit with Sugar Minott's "Good Thing Going." In the mid-1980s Audrey Hall's "One Dance Won't Do," an answer to Beres Hammond's "What One Dance Can Do," was a British pop hit, and Germain said the British hits paid for Penthouse. He opened the studio in 1987 at 56 Slipe Pen Road, next door to Clarke's Music Works; it took its name from the building's top floor.

Penthouse was the source of a more considered dancehall. Germain brought veteran singers such as Marcia Griffiths and Beres Hammond back into the dancehall and worked with the new deejays: Cutty Ranks, Tony Rebel, Cobra, Terror Fabulous and above all Buju Banton, whose cuts of Penthouse riddims usually came out on top among as many as nine other versions. "I grew up listening to Studio One songs," he said. "I just lick the ones I feel the most at the time I am recording." He called it a gift with no formula, and took Coxsone Dodd as his model: "you knew his sound anywhere you heard it." His method was to choose the right vintage riddim and have Steely and Clevie, Mafia and Fluxy or the Firehouse Crew rebuild it, and he was one of the first Jamaican producers to build riddims around samples. Dave Kelly engineered for him before starting his own label, and Penthouse later had a crossover hit with Tanto Metro and Devonte's "Everyone Falls in Love."

He also managed his artists, Buju above all. Buju was on Penthouse for nearly two decades, through Voice of Jamaica, 'Til Shiloh, Inna Heights and Friends for Life. Germain moved Penthouse to a new studio on Ballater Avenue in 2006 and went on developing new singers, among them Romain Virgo.

Last updated November 5, 2026

Connections

Notes

  1. Steve Barrow and Peter Dalton, The Rough Guide to Reggae, 3rd ed. (London: Rough Guides, 2004), 312.
  2. Guillaume Huyard, "Interview: Donovan Germain," United Reggae, April 7, 2010, https://unitedreggae.com/articles/n355/040710/interview-donovan-germain.
  3. Angus Taylor, "Interview with Donovan Germain: 25 Years Penthouse Records," Reggaeville, February 19, 2014, https://www.reggaeville.com/artist-details/beres-hammond/news/view/interview-with-donovan-germain-25-years-penthouse-records/. Huyard, "Interview: Donovan Germain."
  4. Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 205, 312; Taylor, "Interview with Donovan Germain." The Rough Guide places Germain in New York when he recorded Cultural Roots.
  5. Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 312; Taylor, "Interview with Donovan Germain." Germain names "Smile" as the follow-up.
  6. Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 312; Huyard, "Interview: Donovan Germain."
  7. Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 312-15, 318.
  8. Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 313. The first sample, the Rough Guide says, came from the Channel One cut of Leroy Sibbles's "Love Me Girl." Guillaume Huyard, "Interview: Donovan Germain," United Reggae, April 7, 2010, https://unitedreggae.com/articles/n355/040710/interview-donovan-germain.
  9. Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 315-16; Huyard, "Interview: Donovan Germain."
  10. "Penthouse Keeps Unreleased Buju Songs," Jamaica Gleaner, August 11, 2015, https://web5.jamaica-gleaner.com/article/entertainment/20150811/penthouse-keeps-unreleased-buju-songs. Bradley notes that Inna Heights found Buju "back on the Jamaican Penthouse Records." Lloyd Bradley, This Is Reggae Music: The Story of Jamaica's Music (New York: Grove Press, 2001), 539.
  11. Huyard, "Interview: Donovan Germain."

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