The emergence of a Chinese-Jamaican community in Jamaica dates back to the 1850’s, when a population of Hakka Chinese moved to the island as indentured laborers. By the mid-20th century, more than half the population of Hakka Chinese were local-born and had cemented an integral role in Jamaican society. Many of the same people who would later go on to run the legendary record stores and recording studios in Kingston initially made their money through ice cream parlors, grocery stores, and betting agencies.
Patricia Chin—aka Miss Pat, aka “the mother of reggae”—was one such entrepreneur who opened a store in order to sell all of the discarded records her husband, Vincent, would collect through his work as a jukebox repair man. The store, which was called Randy’s Record Mart, and its accompanying Studio 17, went on to provide a crucial platform for young up-and-coming musicians who would later become household names. “We owned a studio called Randy’s Studio 17 in the ’60s and that was where we did the recording,” says Miss Pat over the phone from Jamaica Queens, New York, where, at 82 years old, she continues to run VP Records—the world’s largest independent reggae label. “We recorded people like Bob Marley before he became popular, Bunny Wailer, Dennis Brown, Gregory Isaacs, Israel Vibration.”
Randy’s was one of many businesses owned by Chinese-Jamaicans that helped to define the sound of Jamaican music. The Hoo Kim’s Channel One Studio, Leslie Kong’s Beverley’s Record Label, and Herman Chin Loy’s Aquarius Record Store are some of the other cultural institutions that ushered in the accented upbeats, jazz-influenced horn riffs, powerful bass lines, and nyabinghi rhythms now commonly associated with Reggae.
