The hand drummer, who has carried the beat of many a reggae song, gets his due in a special edition of the Caribbean Quarterly to be released by the University of the West Indies.

Kenneth Bilby, an American scholar who has studied percussive music throughout the Caribbean for nearly 40 years, wrote the piece which examines the contributions of percussionists like Count Ossie, Noel 'Skully' Sims, Alvin 'Seeco' Patterson and Bongo Herman.

Dr Clinton Hutton, who edited stories for the book, said Bilby's look at these musicians is timely as the percussionist has all but disappeared from contemporary reggae.

The inspirational Count Ossie (Oswald Williams) is one of Jamaica's great hand drummers. He led the roots group Mystic Revelation of Rastafari on the seminal Groundation album; they were the backing band on Oh Carolina, the classic 1959 song by the Ffolkes Brothers.

Prolific session players

Patterson was Bob Marley's mentor and percussionist for many years, while Sims, Bongo Herman and Uzziah 'Sticky' Thompson were prolific session players during the 1970s and 1980s.

Up to the early 1980s, percussionists were still in demand for studio dates. That changed in the latter stages of that decade when most producers 'replaced' them and horn-men in favour of high-tech keyboards.

Bilby was a research associate in the department of anthropology at the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, DC. His field research on rhythmic music in the Caribbean has been the subject of 15 recorded albums.

He is co-author of the book Caribbean Currents: Caribbean Music from Rumba to Reggae.

The book is a compilation of stories from Caribbean Quarterly's December 2007 edition, titled Pioneers of Jamaican Popular Music. There are feature stories on musician/engineer Hedley Jones, exotic dancer Margarita Mahfood and guitarist Ernie Ranglin.

The Quarterly is reportedly the Caribbean's oldest periodical. It was first published in 1949.