Big Youth

Few living Jamaican have had a more profound influence on popular music than Manley Augustus Buchanan, a man more familiarly known to the world as Big Youth. In the early seventies he led the way for a number of raw, talented young djs to challenge such established performers as U Roy and Dennis Alcapone, and in doing so proved instrumental in forever changing the face of Jamaican music.

As with many of his peers, he had to overcome the severe restraints of poverty and a limited education before finally achieving recognition. Born on 19th April 1949 and raised in Rae Town, a poor district in Kingston, he left school at the age of fourteen to study as a mechanic, and over the years that immediately followed was forced to supplement what little income he could earn from the profession, by driving a cab and working as a building site labourer.

His only real escape from the harsh realities of life in downtown Kingston was popular music and from an early age he began attending local dances, taking every possible opportunity to grab the mic and toast over popular rhythms of the day.

By the early seventies he had developed a style of his own and had gained a reputation as one of the island’s most promising young talents, with his growing popularity eventually leading to a position of the resident dj for one of Kingston’s top sounds, Lord Tippertone.

By now he had acquired the nickname ‘Big Youth’, reflecting his stature and young age, and in 1972, he finally made his recording debut, cutting ‘Movie Man’ for Gregory Isaacs’ ‘African Museum’ label. Although the record failed to achieve much in the way of commercial success, the young dj’s talents quickly led to sessions for a variety of local record makers, most notably Lee Perry, Phil Pratt and Augustus ‘Gussie’ Clarke, who produced the talented youngster’s the first major hit, ‘The Killer’.

Over the ensuing months, he continued to record for almost any entrepreneur who sought his services, with further hits including his first Jamaican mumber one,  ‘S.90 Skank’ for Keith Hudson, ‘Tippertone Rocking’, for Clarke, ‘Medicine Doctor’ for Sonia Pottinger and ‘Chi Chi Run’ for Prince Buster, the latter song providing the title for his debut album.

The hits continued into 1973 with two more Jamaican number ones, ‘A So We Stay’ (for Joe Gibbs) and ‘Cool Breeze’ (for Derrick Harriott) further serving to enhance his growing reputation. Later in the year he made his first attempts at producing with the single ‘Hot Cross Bun’ b/w ‘River Jordan’, the success of which inspired the launch of his own Negusa Negust (Amharic for ‘King Of Kings’) and Augustus Buchanan labels.

By the mid-seventies, Big Youth was widely regarded as one Jamaica’s biggest stars and it was a position he maintained until the arrival of the digital age in the mid-eightes. The changes in style and attitudes this brought resulted in his disillusionment with music and over the years since, his unique talent has infrequently been expressed in the recording studio.

Despite the lack of activity, Big Youth’s outstanding contribution to the development of reggae is today widely acknowledged by music historians, while his influence can still be clearly heard on countless recordings by a whole new generation of djs, with elements of his style echoed in the music of modern day rap and dancehall.