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SYMPOSIUM TO SELECT TOP 100 BEST JAMAICAN SONGS BETWEEN 1957 AND 2007

News Release

The Department of Government at the University of the West Indies invites the public to attend and participate in a symposium on the top 100 best Jamaican songs between 1957 and 2007. This symposium takes place at the Undercroft, the University of the West Indies, Mona, on Thursday April 16th, 2009, beginning at 5:30pm.

A panel including Dr. Omar Davies, former Finance Minister and Opposition spokesman on Finance, who has an immense cultural and intellectual interest in Jamaican popular music; Mr. Bunny Goodison, founder of the Soul Shack Disco and creator and host of the popular radio show, Rhythms; Mr. Frankie Campbell of the Fab 5 Band and president of the Jamaica Vintage Artistes Association; Mr. Francois St. Juste, radio personality and General Manager for Radio at R.J.R.; and Mr. Wayne Chen, businessman, patron of the arts , author and Chairman of the National Gallery of Jamaica, will be presenting a set of criteria and arguments for selecting/recommending the songs/instrumentals that should be included in the top 100. However, members of the public attending the symposium are being asked to participate in the deliberations to shape the criteria and arguments for the selection, as well as to vote on the compositions to be included in the top 100. Come also to listen and to enjoy some of Jamaica’s best songs which will be played at the symposium.

Since the last half of the 20th century, Jamaica has become a power house of global popular music. Its impact on the aesthetic and ontological development and expression of global popular music is phenomenal. Jamaican lyricists, singers, players of instruments, sound technologists and producers have created and recreated some of the best songs/instrumentals in the last 50 years. By so doing, they have created a range of global soundscapes rooted in the rhythmic, linguistic, poetic language and imaginative culture and ritualized artistic movements of the Jamaican body to inspire the world.

This symposium opens another path to the expansion of the intellectual bases, scholarship and knowledge of Jamaican popular music, to celebrate excellence, as well as to strengthen the basis for its economic enhancement.




Contact
Clinton Hutton
Lecturer
869-7591/977-5935
tarharka@yahoo.com