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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Carlton "Santa" Davis

Artist. Reggae, dub

Active
1970s-present
Sunrise
November 21, 1953, Kingston, Jamaica

Carlton "Santa" Davis is one of the most recorded drummers in Jamaican music, a session player whose name appears on a large share of the roots catalog and who was later Peter Tosh's drummer.

He began in Kingston in the late 1960s and became a mainstay of two of the busiest session groups of the 1970s: the Aggrovators, Bunny Lee's working band, and the Soul Syndicate, which backed a wide range of artists including Burning Spear, Jimmy Cliff, and the Wailing Souls. His drumming is on records by Dennis Brown, Johnny Clarke, John Holt, Cornell Campbell, and most of the singers Lee was recording in that decade.

Davis joined Peter Tosh's band Word Sound and Power and played on Bush Doctor, Mystic Man, and Wanted Dread and Alive, and toured with Tosh through his last years. He later worked extensively with Ziggy Marley and the Melody Makers.

He is best known for the "flying cymbal," the open hi-hat behind Bunny Lee's mid-1970s hits, though he has never claimed to have invented it: "I was just in a moment where I played it and it became something." He calls himself an all-rounder and "a power drummer who plays hard." He continues to record and perform, based largely in the United States.

Last updated November 4, 2026

Connections

Notes

  1. In a 2019 interview Davis agreed that his studio work ran through the Aggrovators, the Observers, the Roots Radics, the Soul Syndicate, and Randy's Impact All-Stars, for producers including Bunny Lee, Lee Perry, Duke Reid, and Niney the Observer. Stephen Cooper, "A Historic Conversation with Legendary Drummer Santa Davis, Part 1A," Caribbean News Global, February 1, 2020, https://caribbeannewsglobal.com/a-historic-conversation-with-legendary-drummer-santa-davis-part-1a/. The Rough Guide also names him among the drummers associated with the Roots Radics. Steve Barrow and Peter Dalton, The Rough Guide to Reggae, 3rd ed. (London: Rough Guides, 2004), 249.
  2. The Rough Guide makes Davis and George "Fully" Fullwood the "propulsive bass and drums" of the Soul Syndicate, "the young band from Greenwich Farm," and names Davis as the Aggrovators' drummer, with Sly Dunbar or Carlton Barrett sometimes taking his place; Bradley also lists him among the Aggrovators. Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 118, 152-53; Lloyd Bradley, This Is Reggae Music: The Story of Jamaica's Music (New York: Grove Press, 2001), 349. Wikipedia dates his joining Fullwood in the Rhythm Raiders, soon renamed the Soul Syndicate, to 1969. "Carlton 'Santa' Davis," Wikipedia, accessed October 1, 2026, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carlton_%22Santa%22_Davis. Davis speaks of a session with Burning Spear and of touring with Jimmy Cliff, and confirms recording with the Wailing Souls, but as his own credits rather than the Soul Syndicate's. Cooper, "Historic Conversation, Part 1A"; Stephen Cooper, "A Historic Conversation with Legendary Drummer Santa Davis, Part 1B," Caribbean News Global, February 6, 2020, https://caribbeannewsglobal.com/a-historic-conversation-with-legendary-drummer-santa-davis-part-1b/.
  3. The Rough Guide credits the Aggrovators' "flying cymbals" rhythms behind Bunny Lee's mid-1970s hits for Johnny Clarke and Cornell Campbell and names John Holt, Horace Andy, and Delroy Wilson among his other singers; Dennis Brown's "Westbound Train" (1973, for Niney) rode "a brash, insistent rhythm from the Soul Syndicate." Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 152-53, 196.
  4. Wikipedia credits Sly Dunbar, not Davis, with the drums on Bush Doctor (1978), Mystic Man (1979), and Wanted Dread & Alive (1981), and Davis on Mama Africa (1983, with Dunbar) and No Nuclear War (1987); it says Davis and Fullwood replaced Sly and Robbie in Word, Sound and Power in 1981. "Bush Doctor," "Mystic Man," "Wanted Dread & Alive," "Mama Africa (Peter Tosh album)," "No Nuclear War," and "Word, Sound and Power," Wikipedia, accessed October 1, 2026, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bush_Doctor, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mystic_Man, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wanted_Dread_%26_Alive, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mama_Africa_(Peter_Tosh_album), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_Nuclear_War, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Word,_Sound_and_Power. Davis agreed that Dunbar was Tosh's drummer before him and that he was with Tosh from about 1981 until Tosh's death; he had earlier recorded "Ketchy Shuby" for Legalize It (1976), and he names Mama Africa as his favorite of his records. Cooper, "Historic Conversation, Part 1A"; Cooper, "Historic Conversation, Part 1B." He was among those shot at Tosh's home on September 11, 1987, and survived. Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 140.
  5. In 2019 Davis was described as Ziggy Marley's drummer of about twenty years, and in 2014 he wrote of his "time as a touring drummer with Ziggy Marley." Cooper, "Historic Conversation, Part 1A"; Carlton Davis, "Open Letter by Carlton Santa Davis," Reggaeville, October 9, 2014, https://www.reggaeville.com/artist-details/ziggy-marley/news/view/open-letter-by-carlton-santa-davis/.
  6. Davis's remarks are in Angus Taylor, "Carlton 'Santa' Davis on 'Flying Cymbals,' King Tubby and Reggae's Evolution," FACT, April 2, 2016, https://factmag.com/2016/04/02/santa-davis-flying-cymbals-reggae-drummer-interview. The Rough Guide associates Davis above all with the "flying cymbals" sound, an open hi-hat style that it says Bunny Lee had him develop in 1974 as a response to the "Philly bump" style of US soul. Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 152; see also 227. Davis disclaims inventing it: he says the technique was "prevalent in soca, calypso, and other forms of Jamaican music" before he used it on Johnny Clarke's "None Shall Escape the Judgment," and that Bunny Lee named it at that session. Davis, "Open Letter." He calls himself "a power drummer who plays hard." Cooper, "Historic Conversation, Part 1B." Sly Dunbar named him with Horsemouth and others as drummers who could "hold a tempo." Bradley, This Is Reggae Music, 514. Davis himself told Katz that he adapted the pattern from MFSB's "TSOP" at a 1974 session for "None Shall Escape the Judgement," and that Lee "was the one who name it 'flying cymbal'"; Katz notes earlier precedents and the Johnny Clarke account that it began as Davis loosening up. David Katz, "The (Not So Clear-Cut) History of the Flying Cymbal," Red Bull Music Academy Daily, July 31, 2013, https://daily.redbullmusicacademy.com/2013/07/flying-cymbal-feature.
  7. Cooper interviewed Davis at his home in Los Angeles in December 2019. Cooper, "Historic Conversation, Part 1A."

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