World of Jamaican Music

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

Remembering Derrick Harriott (1939-2026), rocksteady singer and producer. Read his story →

Drumbago

Artist. Ska, rocksteady

Active
1940s-1969
Sunrise
1918 or 1919
Sunset
January 19, 1969, Kingston, Jamaica
Also known as
Arkland Parks, Arkland Parkes, Auckland Parkes, Drumbago All Stars, Drumbago Orchestra

Arkland "Drumbago" Parks was a master drummer of ska and the leader of one of Kingston's first session bands, the Drumbago All Stars.

He started at fifteen in his brother Luther's orchestra, played with Eric Deans and Val Bennett, and in the late 1940s formed his own orchestra, whose weekend shows at the Silver Slipper club earned him his nickname. He began recording in 1959. He was the drummer in the core session crew that played, under different names, for Duke Reid, Coxsone Dodd and Prince Buster, and was at Ernest Ranglin's JBC session for "Easy Snappin'." Prince Buster recalled telling Drumbago to play the march beat of the street parades on the bass drum, one of the steps he credits with creating ska. Drumbago himself told the Sunday Gleaner in 1964 that he and the bassist Rupert Miller had been in on "the original search to find the sound which came to be called Ska." Sly Dunbar, asked who first played the one drop, suggested "either Drumbago or Lloyd Knibbs."

Drumbago was also an arranger who carried a flute: singers sang their songs to him, and he played them back and passed them to the pianist for the chords, as Jimmy Cliff remembered. Derrick Morgan and Cliff rehearsed with him at his Greenwich Farm rehearsal place before their first session for Leslie Kong. He drove Justin Hinds and the Dominoes' "Carry Go Bring Come," and shared the drum chair at Treasure Isle with Hugh Malcolm. In the early 1960s his rhythm section faced a challenge from the younger players who formed the Skatalites. By 1968 and 1969, semi-invalid, he was playing fife on records for Clancy Eccles. He departed in Kingston in January 1969, after a short illness.

Last updated November 5, 2026

Connections

Notes

  1. Steve Barrow and Peter Dalton, The Rough Guide to Reggae, 3rd ed. (London: Rough Guides, 2004), 5, 24.
  2. Heather Augustyn, "Drumbago," SkaBook (blog), March 14, 2014, https://skabook.com/2014/03/14/drumbago/, which reprints the Daily Gleaner obituary of January 23, 1969. Augustyn gives his name as Arkland Parkes; the Gleaner's obituary has Auckland Alvin Parkes, which she takes to be an error, and a 1964 Sunday Gleaner article has Arkland Parks.
  3. Lloyd Bradley, This Is Reggae Music: The Story of Jamaica's Music (New York: Grove Press, 2001), 50, 55.
  4. Prince Buster's account in Bradley, This Is Reggae Music, 58. He told Augustyn in 1997 that he asked Drumbago "to put the accent on the one and the three." Heather Augustyn, "Prince Buster Interview," SkaBook (blog), December 18, 2015, https://skabook.com/2015/12/18/prince-buster-interview/. Augustyn notes the many competing accounts of how ska began. Augustyn, "Drumbago."
  5. "Dissension in the Ska Camp," Sunday Gleaner, April 26, 1964, reprinted in Heather Augustyn, "Dissension in the Ska Camp," SkaBook (blog), January 17, 2014, https://skabook.com/2014/01/17/dissension-ska-camp/. The article calls him "one of the acknowledged originators and Dean of the Sound."
  6. Angus Taylor, "Interview: Sly Dunbar's History of Drumming, Part I," Reggaeville, April 12, 2017, https://reggaeville.com/artist-details/sly-robbie/news/view/interview-sly-dunbars-history-of-drumming-part-i.
  7. Jimmy Cliff's account in Bradley, This Is Reggae Music, 97; Derrick Morgan's account in Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 32.
  8. Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 41, 64.
  9. Bradley, This Is Reggae Music, 94.
  10. Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 5; Augustyn, "Drumbago."

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