Count Machuki

Biography

Count Machuki (b. Winston Cooper) is regarded to be one of the first if not the first deejays. What he did was to change the role of the sound system DJ from a person that only puts on the records to a person who had live contact with the audience with the help of a microphone. Count Machuki started out as a disc selector in 1950 for Tom the Great Sebastian (b. Tom Wong).

Machuki later moved on to work with Clement Dodd and his Sir Coxsone's Downbeat. It was with Coxsone's sound on a Easter concert (1956?) that he first chatted on the microphone while selecting records and thus creating what was going to be known as deejaying. What he did was to tell jokes over the music, mixed with American jive and slang. As the reaction of the people was very positive Machuki started to write down lyrics to use in future dances. His first lyric was;

He also created something he referred to as peps, which was vocal ticks that shared elements with what was to be known later as beatboxing.

Unfortunately Count Machuki was scarcely recorded - the earliest recording has to be the song Alcatraz with Baba Brooks Band (released 1966 on Treasure Isle 7").

Count Machuki and Sir Lord Comic can be seen deejaying live in one of the episodes of the classic documentary Deep Roots Music.

Sources

• Howard Johnson & Jim Pines, Reggae - Deep Roots Music(1982), Glasgow, Proteus Books.