John Masouri

Welcome

Thank you for visiting this site. Like many writers I’m not a natural showman and I prefer the sanctity of my desk to the rough and tumble of social media. Your presence here is therefore very much appreciated and even a little miraculous, all things considered…

The official line is that I've been a professional music journalist for over thirty years, specialising in reggae music and its various offshoots. During that time, I've interviewed many of the genre's best-known and most influential figures and made frequent trips to Jamaica but it’s all a bit surreal really. The truth is I was lucky enough to join a little-known UK black music paper as their reggae writer and somehow make a career out of it by freelancing for record companies, meeting every deadline and living on very little whilst doing something I’ve always advised my children to do, which is to be themselves and follow their hearts.

When I started out it was the era of electric typewriters, free vinyl and face-to-face interviews held in rundown magazine offices shrouded in ganja smoke and smelling of damp. Few people had mobile phones and dancehall had yet to become the global phenomenon it is today. Dancehall was the music that first inspired me to write but then my career took a very different turn after members of the Wailers invited me to tell their story, and I was later commissioned to write the first-ever biography of Peter Tosh.

I’m still a regular contributor to magazines in the UK (Echoes), Germany (Riddim) and France (Reggae Vibes) - see links below - but writing books, either as a biographer or ghost-writer, is my major passion. You’ll find examples of books I've written in the section marked The Library, together with extracts from album liner notes and information about Jook Joint Press.

Finally, if you're into current reggae mixed with a little dancehall, then please give a listen to the community radio show I co-host with my son Felix, who's a well-known reggae DJ / promoter here in Brighton.