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 →

Mikey Chung

Artist. Rocksteady, reggae, roots

Active
1967-2021
Sunrise
1950, Christiana, Manchester, Jamaica
Sunset
December 28, 2021
Also known as
Mao, Michael Chung, Michael Anthony Chung

Mikey "Mao" Chung was a guitarist, keyboard player and arranger who worked mostly in the background, as a founder of the Now Generation session band and a member of Peter Tosh's Word, Sound and Power.

Born in Christiana, Manchester, he spent a year and a half of his childhood in Hong Kong before the family settled in Kingston in 1961, where the weekend dances across the street from his father's bakery drew him to music. He taught himself guitar and keyboards; his brother Geoffrey was the singer at first. Their school band, the Mighty Mystics, became the Now Generation, with Mikey on guitar (Herbie Miller writes of "an individual tone that was contemplative and imaginative in an understated way"), Geoffrey on keyboards, Val Douglas on bass and Largie Martin on drums, and soon preferred studio work to dances. The band backed Ernie Smith, Pluto Shervington and Bob Andy at Federal, and played for Derrick Harriott, Harry J and Lloyd Charmers, who, in the Rough Guide's account, brought out the best in Chung and the band; Mikey also played on Lorna Bennett's "Breakfast in Bed," Ken Boothe's "Is It Because I'm Black," and Joe Higgs's Life of Contradiction.

He played guitar on Tosh's "Maga Dog" and became the arranger of Word, Sound and Power, whose Bush Doctor, Mystic Man and Wanted Dread and Alive Miller calls "notable for their robust brass energy and sheer dynamics," where his resemblance to Chairman Mao earned him his nickname. With Sly Dunbar, Robbie Shakespeare and Robbie Lyn he was in the band on Tosh's celebrated live sets, and by the late 1980s he was in the house band at Compass Point in Nassau, backing Grace Jones, Black Uhuru, Joe Cocker and Sinéad O'Connor among others. He departed in 2021; the cause was multiple myeloma.

Last updated November 5, 2026

Connections

Notes

  1. Herbie Miller, "Mikey Chung Remained in the Background," Jamaica Observer, March 19, 2022, https://www.jamaicaobserver.com/2022/03/19/mikey-chung-remained-in-the-background/.
  2. Angus Taylor, "Interview: Mikey Chung in Kingston (Part 1)," United Reggae, December 12, 2018, https://unitedreggae.com/articles/n2435/121218/interview-mikey-chung-in-kingston-part-1, quoting him: "Ironically Geoffrey wasn't the musician. I was the musician."
  3. Miller, "Mikey Chung Remained in the Background." Taylor, "Interview: Mikey Chung."
  4. Miller, "Mikey Chung Remained in the Background." Taylor, "Interview: Mikey Chung." Steve Barrow and Peter Dalton, The Rough Guide to Reggae, 3rd ed. (London: Rough Guides, 2004), 115, 202.
  5. Miller, "Mikey Chung Remained in the Background."
  6. Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 143. Miller, "Mikey Chung Remained in the Background."
  7. Miller, "Mikey Chung Remained in the Background," which says he died after "a prolonged battle."

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