Miss Pat, reggae’s Chinese-Jamaican matriarch, reflects on a life in riddim.

by Noah Schaffer on artsfuse.org, April 3, 2021

Jamaican popular music has evolved considerably since the ska sounds of the early ’60s, but there has been one constant: The Chin family. In 1958 at Kingston’s tiny Randy’s Record Mart, the family began to record the Skatalites, the rocksteady of Alton Ellis, and the dub explorations of Augustus Pablo. In America, they established the Queens-based VP Records empire, which has ruled during the dancehall era.

Family matriarch Patricia Chin — known to most as Miss Pat — recently published her memoir, the coffee table-ready Miss Pat: My Reggae Music Journey (VP Records, 212 pages, $55). The volume contains beautifully reproduced photos from reggae’s past and present as well as many warm memories of reggae greats. But Chin also writes unflinchingly about the challenges her family members faced when they began from scratch after they immigrated to America in the late ’70s. The producer talks about her husband Vincent “Randy” Chin’s struggle with the alcoholism that ultimately took his life and how her grandson and VP A&R man Joel Chin was killed in Jamaica.

Recently, Miss Pat spoke with the Arts Fuse about her life in reggae.

Read the interview at artsfuse.org