A compelling narrative of Jamaica’s music

The doors of all that has culturally stored how music may define our makeup have been flung wide open by author Rohan Budhai in his 560-page journal on Jamaica’s music, A Hit Mek.

If you thought the chapters on all that is to be known of our epic and engaging musical history and journey would have now been closed, do take up this book - guaranteed reading of all what you will think again.

Pun and play on the popular local phrase A It Mek (hit song by Desmond Dekker), the publication is a provocative account of what this term in our vernacular really means – rationale being provided for particular happenings and developments. As it unfolds, A Hit Mek is arguably the whole story of what is untold.

In his stirring foreword, Clyde McKenzie, music consultant and author who has written extensively on Jamaica’s music, notes that Budhai “provides functional interpretations of critical historical events showing the connections between the various Jamaican music genres and how history shaped them and played an essential role in their course”.

Historical documentation, it is driving dramatisation of the various ways of life of the peoples of an island whose music is rhythm and rhapsody of evolving trials and triumphs. Interestingly, you are taken along the tracks of a timeline where the story begins in the late 1490s – with the seafaring explorer Christopher Columbus, in 1492, encountering (as against discovering) indigenous Taino tribes intermixed with Africans in the region. Importantly, they already had their own musical styles, including drumming, call-and-response singing, and various instruments, which were mainly adopted from and influenced by Africans.

A Hit Mek presents the input of the Anglo-Spanish of our enslavers and its impact on the journey of Jamaican music. It explores the tragedy of the slave trade and its effect on New World Africans. It looks – it probes – the music of the Tainos, Maroons, the enslaved and the indentured, and the defining musical artforms of kumina, folk, mento, calypso, Festival music, ska, rock steady, reggae, and dancehall - and the impact of Jamaican sound systems on world music. It goes on to salute the thousands of contributors to Jamaica’s many music styles and highlights the contributions of Afro-Jamaicans, Lebanese/Syrian-Jamaicans, Chinese-Jamaicans, and Indian-Jamaicans, as well as the many Jamaican bands, radio stations, and entertainment organisations that helped to advance the music.

MENTO

The book notes that Mento was the first recognisable local music form and the first music to be electronically recorded in Jamaica. However, Mento’s origin is often disputed by foremost cultural icons and intellectuals like the late Rex Nettleford, and Rosario Budhai, a former member of the Cuban national choir who claims that it is a Cuban genre. Mento itself is a Latin word and a derivative of the verb mentar, meaning ‘to call out’ or ‘to mention’.

A Hit Mek highlights – music playing the very notes of our lives and lifestyles. Reggae, arguably, has, perhaps, played it like no other artform – rhythm of resistance, resilience, and all that is resounding. Reggae music has been primarily influenced by Jamaica’s West African legacy, R&B, jazz, soul, Indentured people, and European music. It linked Jamaican music with its Afro-Anglo, Afro-American, Afro-Cuban, and Afro-Caribbean heritage. Reggae went on to influence local subgenres such as lovers’ rock, dub, dub poetry, reggae jazz, reggae gospel, and reggae fusion. In addition, reggae’s offbeat, easygoing rhythms made it easy to fuse with and influence genres like pop, rock, punk, disco, hip-hop, electronic, house, techno, trap, reggaeton, ambient, dubstep, trip-hop, jungle, garage, ragga soca, India’s (Punjabi) bhangra, and Africa’s Afrobeats reggae, uniquely defining Jamaica to the world.

Rohan Budhai, who was involved in music production as a teenager to eventually establishing his own record label, Howlers International Music, said that his research revealed that much of the historical perspective of our music had been omitted in most of the books on Jamaican music.

Author of A Feisty Bull and the upcoming The Art of Life in Jamaica (a collection of 25 short stories), he revealed that he started writing A Hit Mek during the early years of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2021 and finished the publication in mid-2025. He considers the book to be the most comprehensive historical perspective on Jamaican music to date though he believes that there is much more to explore of the country’s musical legacy. Music, as he clearly sees it, creates ‘notes’ that are the very keys to our lives. ‘A-it-mek’ he’ll keep on writing …