Fascinated by this largely under-exposed angle, I found from interviewing Heather Augustyn, among other little-known facts, that the first sound-system operator was probably a woman, that “My Boy Lollipop”’s singer Millie is still as elusive as it gets, that even the biggest female producer was merely summed up to pearls and chiffon and satin in her days.

As per usual with Augustyn, the book ventures on an all-out treasure hunt, tracking down the unsung heroines of the early days of local music on the island. She never stopped since: her fourth book, Songbirds – Pioneering Women in Jamaican Music, just came out and offers a chance to over fifty legendary female figures to tell their tales. And on she went to put together her first book in 2010, a cornerstone called Ska: An Oral History. But then, as a student in graduate school getting her master degree in writing, and willing to get to the bottom of things, she realized that there was not one book out fully dedicated to the history of ska-the “Jamaican jazz” that planted the seeds for all the reggaes to come-while there were about a million and a half about Bob Marley. However, a few MTV shows, such as The Young Ones and 120 Minutes, did expose her to the Beat and Madness before she became fully hooked to ska, thanks notably to a 1994 show of the Toasters in Chicago. Coming from small-town Indiana and growing up in the ’80s, author Heather Augustyn wouldn’t say she had privileged access to music in general, let alone Jamaican music in particular.

Songbirds by Heather Augustyn