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Artist
Jah Thomas
12+ albums
reggaedancehalldancehall reggaeroots reggaerub-a-dub
about
Jah Thomas was an important figure on the Jamaican music scene during both the roots era of the '70s and the subsequent dancehall decade of the '80s. Besides releasing several DJ sides of his own in the latter half of the '70s, Thomas also came into his own as one of the island's top producers for both singers and DJs. Many of these sides found their way to the dub studios of King Tubby, who transformed a wealth of Thomas' rhythms into a some of the best dub tracks to emerge from Jamaica. Born Nkrumah Thomas in Kingston in 1955, Jah Thomas was named after Kwame Nkrumah, the celebrated African nationalist who secured Ghana's (originally the Gold Coast) independence from the British at the beginning of the 1960s. Although not much is known of Thomas' early years, his first foray into the highly competitive Kingston music scene came in the mid-'70s. Thomas' story begins with the legendary Channel One studio, where the aspiring DJ first cut tracks as one of a crew of young chatters in the mold of innovators like U-Roy, Big Youth, and Dillinger. Open for business in 1973, Channel One was set up by the brothers Ernest and Joseph "Joe Joe" Hookim on Maxfield Avenue in Kingston. While also contracting out studio time to one of the day's most important and prolific producers, Bunny "Striker" Lee, the Hookim brothers established their own line of record production, using the Sly Dunbar and Robbie Shakespeare-driven Revolutionaries as their house band (also working for Lee, the group f
