JamaicanSounds was built by myself (Chris Ryan aka DJ Monkey Man) for the sole purpose of spreading my love of the music created in Jamaica and now played around the world. This website is a never ending project that will continue to grow and change.
My obsession with Jamaican music started with 3rd-Wave Ska in the late 90's with Reel Big Fish & Save Ferris as my introductory bands. From their my tastes expanded into all of the different styles of ska from the traditional Jamaican sound that started in the 50's and 60's, to the Two-Tone sounds of England, and back up to the modern Ska Revival, Ska Rock, & Ska Punk sounds.
In the early 2000's my love of Ska and knowledge of web design lead me to create SkaFreaks, an all Ska website and Radio station. The site and station ran in varying states from 2006 up to 2016 when I decided to shut it all down. My love for Ska was still there but my musical focus had shifted into other styles, mainly Post, Math, & Experimental Rock. The RX Bandits, once killers in Ska Punk had shifted their sound and I followed right along with them leading me into a world of music I never knew existed.
In time, my musical journey circled back around pulling me into modern Dubtronic and Reggae Rock, which then lead me back into Ska, Roots Reggae, Dancehall, Mento, and so much more. There was a resurgence of the music not just within myself but in the world discovering new artists and scenes that inspired my life on a daily basis.
My original plan was just to do a podcast called It Started In Jamaica were I would play some tunes, talk about the music of Jamaica and all of it's musical family tree. As I released a few episodes, I got the desire to also just release some episodes with only music, cutting out my annoying chatter and giving the full time to the bands, and the Jamaican Sounds podcast was born. As I continued some work on these, I also began building a website to house the podcasts. My mind however, had other ideas.
As the website project began I started thinking of what I would truly love to see in a website. There were a lot of ideas, but I started with the basic idea of cataloging all Jamaican Music artists and releases. This was before I knew of Discogs.com which had done much of the work already, but I wanted it to be even more comprehensive, and focused only on Jamaican Musical Styles. The site went up, came down, went up, came down, and my perfectionist mind kept me struggling to get it how I wanted. After a couple years of struggling to make it into what I saw in my mind, things finally began to click, and the site, while not visable to the public, grew with Wordpress as the backend of the site.
In late 2019, I realized how horrible Wordpress was for what I wanted to do and with the sites data intact I began again, almost completely from scratch. This time, however would be different. Not only had my knowledge grown, my ideas for the site solidified, but my whole mindset changed. I spent almost every spare minute working on the site and shortly there after the site was launched on ...
The journey of JamaicanSounds is meant to be a never ending on, as there are still ideas in my head, and a never ending stream of incredible artists releasing the sounds that were birthed in Jamaica. Take a look around and enjoy!
You can contact me directly for any reason at [email protected], or find JamaicanSounds on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Youtube, & Twitch