Ranking Toyan
Artist. Dancehall, roots
- Active
- 1970s-1991
- Sunrise
- 1955, Kingston, Jamaica
- Sunset
- 1991, Jamaica
- Also known as
- Toyan, Byron Everton Letts
Ranking Toyan was one of the deejays who, with the Lone Ranger, Ranking Joe, Welton Irie and Clint Eastwood, carried the music from the cultural chants of Big Youth to the dancehall chat of the 1980s.
A slightly asthmatic-sounding deejay from the Socialist Roots and Romantic Hi-Fi sounds, he was a highly rated live performer who only sometimes matched his dancehall reputation on record. He owed a lot to Big Youth and Dillinger, but he adapted their approach to Don Mais's pioneering dancehall riddims on Roots Tradition, backed by the musicians who became the Roots Radics, and his "Gun Fever" with Little John was an energetic take on an old topic. For Henry "Junjo" Lawes he made How the West Was Won (1981), whose title track used the "Gunman" riddim before Michael Prophet's record was out; run together without gaps like a sound-system session, it made a strong impression in London, and he never quite repeated it. He also cut "Hot Bubblegum" for George Phang, recorded at Channel One and was one of Jah Thomas's most successful deejays. Like Ranking Joe, Bradley notes, the once spiritual Toyan saw that slackness had won and changed his style. By the time of the Rough Guide's third edition he was "the late Toyan."
Last updated October 14, 2026
Connections
- The Roots Radics (backing group)
- Henry "Junjo" Lawes (producer)
- George Phang (producer)
- Jah Thomas (producer)
- Little John (collaborator)
- Channel One (studio)
Notes
- Steve Barrow and Peter Dalton, The Rough Guide to Reggae, 3rd ed. (London: Rough Guides, 2004), 255.
- Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 269.
- Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 250; Lloyd Bradley, This Is Reggae Music: The Story of Jamaica's Music (New York: Grove Press, 2001), 494.
- Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 270. Discogs dates the Greensleeves album to 1981. "Toyan: How the West Was Won," Discogs, accessed October 7, 2026, https://www.discogs.com/master/202295.
- Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 280, 282, 286.
- Bradley, This Is Reggae Music, 508.
- Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 250. Wikipedia says his life was taken in Jamaica in 1991 and gives his name as Byron Everton Letts, as Discogs does. "Toyan," Wikipedia, accessed October 7, 2026, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toyan.
