The deejay Ranking Toyan (born Byron Letts), also known simply as Toyan (especially later in his career), was a respected live performer and prolific studio artist with a continuous, smooth delivery and slightly raw-edged voice. His popularity peaked in the early 80’s, although his recording and performing career date back to the 70’s.

Toyan initially found recording success in 1978 with records for producer Don Mais’s Roots Tradition label. In the early 1980’s Toyan began a close association with producer and sound owner Henry "Junjo" Lawes, and was a mainstay on Lawe’s Volcano Hi-Power Sound System. Toyan’s “How The West Was Won” LP for Lawes, released in 1981 on the Greensleeves label, was a landmark album for both deejay and producer. Further Toyan recordings for Lawes include 1982’s “Spar With Me” and “DJ Clash” LPs (the latter split with Nicodemus), 1983’s “DJ Daddy” and “Every Posse Want Me” LPs, and numerous singles.

Toyan also worked with a variety of other producers, cutting albums for Jah Thomas, Channel One, Joe Gibbs, and George Phang, who recorded Toyan’s last solo LP, 1984’s “Hot Bubble Gum”. The title of the album was refering to a new deejaying style created by Toyan - but it was actually based entirely on the deejaying patterns of Screecha Nice.

Toyan also performed on other eminent sound systems, appearing on Gemini, Aces, Prince Jammy’s Hi-Fi, Arrows, Lees Unlimited, and many others.

In the mid 80’s Toyan’s run of popularity began to fade, his descent perhaps hastened by the concurrent disappearance from the music scene of Junjo Lawes, who relocated to New York and was soon jailed. A notable recorded performance of Toyan from this period is his defense of New York’s Third World sound system in an epic clash against London heavyweight Saxon at Tilden Ballroom in Brooklyn in 1985. After a near-complete musical dry spell in the late 1980s, during which he spent some time in New York and in Boston, Toyan was murdered in Jamaica in 1991.

LPs by Toyan