Jay Douglas is a Canadian musician, based in Toronto. He is a long-time member of the Toronto music scene.

Early life

Douglas was born in Jamaica. Douglas spent his childhood in Montego Bay, Jamaica, where he first performed. He moved to Toronto, Ontario to join his mother in 1963 when he was a teenager.

Career

According to a 2012 profile in '' Now'' magazine, Douglas' first Canadian performances were at Toronto's Central Technical School, when he was a student there. His first professional group was The Cougars, a

funk Funk is a music genre that originated in African American communities in the mid-1960s when musicians created a rhythmic, danceable new form of music through a mixture of various music genres that were popular among African Americans in the m ...

band. Since then, Douglas has performed steadily at clubs and festivals all over Ontario. He has performed at Toronto's Massey Hall,

Roy Thompson Hall Roy Thomson Hall is a concert hall in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Located downtown in the city's entertainment district, it is home to the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, the Toronto Mendelssohn Choir, and the Toronto Defiant. Opened in 1982, its cir ...

, and the Glenn Gould Studio. In 2012 his album ''Lovers' Paradise'' was one of that year's five Juno nominees for best reggae album."Bleaching Shop scores for Exco Levi"
. ''Jamaica Observer'', BY HOWARD CAMPBELL, March 04, 2012 ''Now'' described Douglas as a "treasure trove of Toronto-Jamaican musical history". In 2012, Seattle-based Light in the Attic Records produced a retrospective on the arrival of reggae to North America that relied heavily on Douglas's performances, knowledge, and contacts. Matt Sullivan, a producer with Light in the Attic, called Douglas "one of the finest soul-reggae singers in North America". Errol Nazareth, writing in the ''

Toronto Sun The ''Toronto Sun'' is an English-language tabloid newspaper published daily in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. The newspaper is one of several ''Sun'' tabloids published by Postmedia Network. The newspaper's offices is located at Postmedia Place i ...

'' called it ironic that it required producers from Seattle to fully recognize the significance of Douglas's musical contributions. On September 19, 2015, Douglas debuted a song entitled "Reggae Lane" at a concert to celebrate the completion of a mural celebrating the history of reggae at the recently renamed

Reggae Lane Reggae Lane is a roadway in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, that runs east from Oakwood Avenue, behind a strip of buildings on the south side of Eglinton Avenue in the Little Jamaica ethnic enclave. For most of its history it had no official name, ...

. Douglas was shortlisted for the 2020 Juno Awards, for Reggae Recording of the Year, for ''"Jah Children"''.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Douglas, Jay Black Canadian musicians Canadian reggae musicians Jamaican emigrants to Canada Musicians from Toronto