Sparrow Martin
Artist. Ska, reggae
- Active
- 1958-present
- Sunrise
- c. 1941, Jones Town, Kingston, Jamaica
- Also known as
- Sparrow, Winston Martin, Winston "Sparrow" Martin, Ska Rebirth
Winston "Sparrow" Martin is a drummer and multi-instrumentalist who played in the bands of the ska years and then, for more than three decades, led the band at Alpha Boys School, the school that had trained him.
A boy from Jones Town, he was taken to Alpha at eight by a mother at her wit's end, and stayed until eighteen; a nun who caught him climbing a tree in the rain called him "you naughty little sparrow." At Alpha he learned the E-flat horn, trumpet, euphonium and drums. He played in the Jamaica Constabulary Force Band from 1958 and the Jamaica Military Band from 1961, and his first record was the drum part, with Joe Williams's group, on Lord Creator's independence calypso. After a year in the Sonny Bradshaw Quartet he joined Carlos Malcolm's Afro-Jamaican Rhythms permanently in 1964, and he also toured England with Jimmy James and the Vagabonds and played with Inner Circle, with the pianist Monty Alexander, and for Coxsone Dodd.
Sister Mary Ignatius Davies called him back to Alpha as bandmaster in the late 1980s; he led its band for decades, as he told the writer Heather Augustyn, leaving "all of my musical life" for the job, and in 2011 formed Ska Rebirth with former pupils, later revamped as Skasonics. He has lectured at the University of Technology and received the Bronze Musgrave Medal in 2007.
Last updated October 23, 2026
Connections
- Boris Gardiner (bandmate)
- Inner Circle (bandleader)
- Sonny Bradshaw (bandleader)
- Carlos Malcolm (bandleader)
- Sister Mary Ignatius Davies (mentor)
- Coxsone Dodd (session work)
- Lord Creator (session work)
Notes
- Steve Barrow and Peter Dalton, The Rough Guide to Reggae, 3rd ed. (London: Rough Guides, 2004), 8, which names him among Alpha's bandmasters and says he played with Carlos Malcolm in the 1960s.
- "Sparrow's Diamond Jubilee: Rebellious Boy Turns Established Musician," Jamaica Gleaner, May 15, 2022, https://www.pressreader.com/jamaica/jamaica-gleaner/20220515/282041920730091. Heather Augustyn, "Sparrow Martin: Drummer, Bandleader, Alpha Legend," SkaBook (blog), February 20, 2015, read at https://skabook.com/tag/ska-rebirth/.
- Augustyn, "Sparrow Martin," which quotes a 1964 Star profile giving his age as twenty-three.
- Augustyn, "Sparrow Martin." "Sparrow's Diamond Jubilee." Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 46, 50.
- "Sparrow's Diamond Jubilee," which dates his appointment to 1988 and his tenure to thirty-seven years; Augustyn gives 1989. Augustyn, "Sparrow Martin."
