The World Loves Reggae

Groundins

By: Charles H.E. Campbell

ANDREA Davis must be congratulated for conceptualising and launching International Reggae Day in 1994.

This media festival held each year on July 1, has accomplished one of its goals of focusing the local and international media on celebrating our indigenous genre of music for which Jamaica has become famous all over the world. In Andrea's words, "The world loves Jamaica for its exotic beauty, indomitable spirit, resilient people and unrelenting creativity", (Daily Observer Friday, July 1) words which aptly describe her own personal characteristics.

Over the years, she has doggedly pursued the promotion of this festival, despite the lack of adequate sponsorship. This is such an appropriate launch of the month, because Jamaica's entertainment calendar peaks during July/August, with events such as Portland Jerk Festival today, Reggae Sumfest from July 17 to 23, ATI weekend in Negril from July

29 to August 1, followed closely by our Independence celebrations from August 1 (Emancipation Day) to August 6. These are all big outdoor festivals that have weathered and withstood the test of time, by continuously fine-tuning and upgrading their products to a world standard, each with its own unique attributes and flavour that attract large local and international audiences. They demonstrate the untapped economic potential that can accrue to Jamaica

by pursuing entertainment tourism aggressively, using reggae's appeal to enhance the thrust. It is one of our greatest resources, but we are yet to come up with a national plan to maximise our competitive advantage from our association with its creation and development.

In a radio discussion on RJR's Beyond The Headlines with Robbie Shakespeare and myself on Friday evening, a part of the discussion centred on whether the changes in our local music were positive. While I take no issue with the authenticity and enormous appeal of dancehall music, I believe we sell ourselves short, by not providing more diversification in the type of music aired on local radio. Even with an expansion, over time, in the amount of radio stations existing in Jamaica, for an entire generation, in the main, there has been such a sameness of programming, that original reggae is relegated to very little space on prime time radio.

The end result is that many youths below 25 years of age, even our younger musicians, are not acquainted with the songs of artistes such as Don Drummond, Millie Small, Alton Ellis, Delroy Wilson, Desmond Dekker, Prince Buster, Derrick Morgan, Roy Shirley, Jacob Miller, and the list goes on. There are however, some notable, recent exceptions worth mentioning. For example, Bess FM and Mello FM do themselves proud daily, with a much broader musical repertoire than most other stations.

In contrast, reggae music makes up a significant part of mainstream radio in Europe, Asia and Africa. Roots

reggae is now experiencing resurgence in Europe, with a new generation of fans and musicians leading the way. As Robbie Shakespeare said in that interview, foreign musicians and artistes are now producing and making many of the recent reggae hit songs, but they have yet to fully capture that special ingredient that seems to come only from Jamaica.

The international market therefore is still hungry for the authentic thing. This summer, for instance, I detect that the touring schedules of many of our artistes have expanded in the duration and number of countries included. Our touring artistes are the perfect ambassadors who could help in promoting a renewed thrust to marketing Jamaica as the world's number one destination for entertainment tourism.

What Jamaica needs to do, desperately, is to establish some official entertainment zones in all parishes across the island, so we can spread

the benefit more evenly. Simultaneously, we need to deepen the integration of music into the school curriculum, so that our budding talents get the kind of foundation which most of our earliest artistes and musicians benefited from at the dawn of our music, 50 years ago.

Email: che.campbell@gmail.com

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