Tom the Great Sebastian was an early
Jamaica
Jamaica (; ) is an island country situated in the Caribbean Sea. Spanning in area, it is the third-largest island of the Greater Antilles and the Caribbean (after Cuba and Hispaniola). Jamaica lies about south of Cuba, and west of His ...
n
sound system started by Tom Wong in 1950,
named for a trapeze performer
in
Barnum and Bailey
The Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus (also known as the Ringling Bros. Circus, Ringling Bros., the Barnum & Bailey Circus, Barnum & Bailey, or simply Ringling) is an American traveling circus company billed as The Greatest Show on Ear ...
's circus.
The group has been called "the all-time giant of sound systems"
and helped launch several notable artists.
Count Matchuki is generally credited as Tom's first
deejay
A disc jockey, more commonly abbreviated as DJ, is a person who plays recorded music for an audience. Types of DJs include radio DJs (who host programs on music radio stations), club DJs (who work at a nightclub or music festival), mobile D ...
,
before he joined
Coxsone Dodd, and
Duke Vin was one of Tom's
selectors.
The sound was also backed by
Prince Buster. It was later known as Metromedia.
History
Tom Wong, half Chinese-Jamaican and half Afro-Jamaican,
owned a hardware store where he played music and got started in the music business by taking his equipment out to parties. He was "widely regarded as the leading sound system of his day," and helped popularize
dancehall music and sound system dance, aided in no small part by powerful amplifiers built by fellow DJ
Hedley Jones. In addition to the equipment, his musical selections (many imported directly from the United States) and his originality as a DJ have been credited for his success.
Tom played
rhythm and blues
Rhythm and blues, frequently abbreviated as R&B or R'n'B, is a genre of popular music that originated in African-American communities in the 1940s. The term was originally used by record companies to describe recordings marketed predominantly ...
loved by the "ghetto folk" and music intended to attract a more upper-class audience, such as
merengue and
calypso.
There are rumors that
Duke Reid
Arthur "Duke" Reid CD (21 July 1915 – 1 January 1975) was a Jamaican record producer, DJ and label owner.
He ran one of the most popular sound systems of the 1950s called Reid's Sound System, whilst Duke himself was known as The Troja ...
, a competing sound system operator who started four years after Tom and is credited with bringing gangland-style tactics to dancehall,
drove Tom out of the downtown area of Kingston using ruffians from the
Back-O-Wall slum, but Duke Vin insists that Duke and Tom were friends and that Duke's followers never bothered Tom. The closest they came to a
sound clash
A sound clash is a musical competition where crew members from opposing sound systems pit their skills against each other. Sound clashes take place in a variety of venues, both indoors and outdoors, and primarily feature reggae and dancehall music. ...
was a set of competing parties in adjacent yards; they never went head-to-head.
Tom did, however, move away from the violence of the downtown area
to the Silver Slipper club in the more upscale
Cross Roads area,
a move which did not harm him financially.
Tom the Great Sebastian was the most popular of the first generation of sound systems until the mid-1950s when the "big three" of sound systems rose to popularity:
Coxsone Dodd's Downbeat, Duke Reid's The Trojans, and King Edward's Giant.
Tom Wong committed suicide in 1971.
After his death, the sound system was continued by Lou Gooden, who changed its name to Metromedia, after a record label.
In 1976 it was sold again to Haidan "Jimmy Metro" James.
[The contemporaries]
, '' Jamaica Observer'', 9 November 2012, retrieved 10 November 2012 Metromedia became one of the most popular sounds of the 1980s, featuring the deejay
Peter Metro and selector
Sky Juice
The sky is an unobstructed view upward from the surface of the Earth. It includes the atmosphere and outer space. It may also be considered a place between the ground and outer space, thus distinct from outer space.
In the field of astronomy, ...
. The sound system still operates from its Woodford Park base.
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Sebastian, Tom The Great
1971 deaths
Jamaican sound systems
Year of birth missing