Jamaica Gleaner
Published: Tuesday | December 18, 2012
Home : Entertainment
UTech's Chancellor's Medal to music industry fitting
Jordane Delahaye, Gleaner Writer

According to Piero Scaruffi in his book A History of Popular Music, the first Jamaican recording studio opened in 1951. It recorded mento music, a fusion of European and African folk dance music.

Mento music then soon evolved into ska, Jamaica's first truly indigenous sound, which put the small island on the map in the pantheon of world music.

Jamaica became an independent country in 1962, but social problems had multiplied. During the mid '60s, ska music segued into rocksteady, named after Alton Ellis' hit.

The word 'reggae' was coined around 1960s in Jamaica and marked the emergence of a fresh sound in the Jamaican music industry. Reggae then underwent a metamorphosis through dubbing and deejaying, which then gave rise to a new sound - dancehall - which dominated the '80s.

In the 1990s, there was an international reggae fusion phenomenon, which is said to have been pioneered by Shaggy and the dynamic duo Chaka Demus and Pliers, and this became the popular sound through to the early 2000s.

Dancehall then took up the reins once again; but today's dancehall is different from that of yesteryear with faster and heavier beats and the incorporation of more electronic elements.

Needless to say, the Jamaican music industry has accomplished feats vastly disproportionate to its small size. This fact offers some insight as to why the University of Technology decided to bestow its highest honour - the Chancellor's Medal - to the Jamaican music industry.

The medal was officially handed over at a ceremony hosted at the Courtleigh Auditorium on Saturday night.

The institution's chancellor, Edward Seaga, presented the medal to a representative group from the industry.

The award's final resting place will be at the Jamaica Music Museum, which also had a small exhibition at the ceremony.

The exhibition - Visualising 50 Years of Jamaican Popular Music: Seeing the Sound and Hearing the Images - comprised various paraphernalia documenting the history of Jamaican music and its journey to where it is today.

Guests were also taken on a musical excursion as various performers took to the stage to pay homage to the Jamaican music industry by performing their renditions of a carefully selected list of classics such as Millie Small's My Boy Lollipop, Peter Tosh's Equal Rights, and Jimmy Cliff's Many Rivers to Cross.

Seaga revealed that the recently released Reggae Golden Jubilee album was now at No. 3 on the Billboard reggae charts, moving up from No. 10 the previous week.

The album follows reggae luminary Beres Hammond's One Love, One Life in the No. 2 position, and American reggae and alternative rock musician Matisyahu with his fourth studio album Spark Seeker in the No. 1 position.

That the reggae charts are still being dominated by veterans and non-Jamaican musicians speaks volumes to the dismal state of reggae music in Jamaica today.
