“You have plenty of singers singing about righteousness and reality but they don’t live it, you know. Anything you sing about you are supposed to live.” Barry Brown.



Despite recording powerfully and prolifically for over three decades Barry Brown, the roots man’s foremost vocalist of choice, has rarely received the accolades that are genuinely due for his considerable contribution to the development of conscious reggae music. Born in Kingston in 1962, young Barry paid his dues “hanging out” at Bunny ‘Striker’ Lee’s Greenwich Farm headquarters running endless errands, including delivering food to the many musicians at Striker’s marathon sessions, all the while refining his distinctive signature sound. Johnny Clarke recalled that in the early to mid seventies he would try his luck at the numerous talent shows held in the Kingston ghettos alongside “artists like Barry Brown, Mighty Diamonds and Sugar Minott… but we were young and nobody had any name yet”. For a short time Barry joined with fellow roots singer, Rod Taylor, and Johnny Lee in a vocal group named The Aliens before they decided to go their separate ways.