WHEN it comes to music Marlon Wilson, aka sound system selector Fyah Blacks, is totally smitten. So much so that every job he held after leaving Titchfield High School he lost to music.

“I was always reaching work late, because I would be playing until late on a set the night before,” he said, grinning.

For Fyah Blacks, a career in entertainment seemed natural as his father and his grandfather were music buffs.

“I grew up surrounded by music and I got to love all genres,” he told the Jamaica Observer.

Now based in Drewsland, Waterhouse he is working as a freelance selector on the Agony sound system and acts as a mentor for youths in a community scarred by many years of gang and political violence.

Fyah Blacks plays mostly in the Kingston 13 and 20 areas, sometimes as many as six nights for the week.

Born in Kingston, Marlon Wilson attended St Jago High School before a football scholarship saw him moving to Titchfield High School in Portland.

For a time, he was Tiger, the popular mascot for Jamaica’s Reggae Boyz football team.

Fyah Blacks started as a selector at age 17 for parties and fetes at his school and community events. He got the big break when he joined the Uprising sound system in 1994 and has not looked back.

He believes the contemporary sound system culture is being hurt by dancehall music’s most negative trait.

“Stop the hating, we are not playing music which is about love. We should push the positives and just log on to love of music,” he said.