ENTITY · PERSON (ARTIST, SELECTOR, PRODUCER…)
U-Roy
Well supported
Ewart Beckford (1942-2021), the deejay who made toasting a recorded form. He had been talking over records on the sound systems for years — with Dickie Dynamic, Sir George the Atomic, and most importantly on Coxsone Dodd's Downbeat — when Duke Reid put him on the Treasure Isle rocksteady rhythms in 1970. The results took over the Jamaican charts, at one point reportedly holding the top three positions at once with "Wake the Town", "Rule the Nation" and "Wear You to the Ball", and the album Version Galore made the form permanent.
What he established was that a deejay's voice over an existing rhythm was a record in its own right, not a novelty: everything from Jamaican deejaying to rap descends in part from those sessions. He ran his own Stur-Gav Hi-Fi from the late 1970s, the sound that gave Josey Wales and Charlie Chaplin their start, and recorded into his final years. He was awarded the Order of Distinction and died on 17 February 2021.
At a glance
- Confidence
- Well supported
- Sources
- obituaries in the Jamaica Gleaner and international press; Treasure Isle discographies; standard reggae histories.
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Debate & reception
What people argued about this record — two documented positions each time, kept apart from verified fact. Browse every argument in the archive →
Did Jamaican toasting father hip-hop?
One side
Toasting as a direct root of rap
The other
Hip-hop as a distinct African-American innovation
A long-running, documented debate stated neutrally: one view holds that Jamaican sound-system toasting, carried to the Bronx by Kingston-raised DJ Kool Herc, was a direct root of rap; another view stresses that hip-hop was a distinct African-American innovation with its own lineage in the block party, funk and the spoken-word tradition. Neutral framing; no verdict.
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