Winston McAnuff

Born in 1957 in Mandeville, Jamaica, Winston McAnuff was raised in a religious environment and started out singing gospel before joining Kingston’s reggae scene in the early 1970s, coming into contact with singers such as Hugh Mundell, Earl Sixteen and Wayne Wade. He recorded two albums that became cornerstones of his career: Pick Hits to Click (1978) and What a Man a Deal With? (1980), where his roots reggae is distinguished by a broad, sometimes gritty vocal style informed by soul and spirituality. After a quieter period in the 1980s and 1990s, he toured with the band Black Kush and regained visibility from the late 1990s thanks to the French label Makasound, which reissued his early recordings and released the compilation Diary of the Silent Years, 1977–2000. In sustained dialogue with the French scene, McAnuff later broadened his repertoire with A Drop (2005) and A Bang (2011) alongside Camille Bazbaz, Paris Rockin’ (2006) with Java, and then A New Day (2013) and Big Brothers (2018) with Fixi, in a register where reggae crosses funk, blues, dub, rock and chanson. He also appears with the collective Inna de Yard, notably on The Soul of Jamaica (2017).