This year’s edition explores 60 years of socio-political development of Jamaican music

Durrant Pate/Contributor

Grounation, the Jamaica Music Museum’s (JaMM) flagship Reggae/Black History Month event, is off to a good start with last Sunday’s opening lecture/performance series setting the prime example of what is to come for the remaining three other series.

This year’s free symposium is themed ‘Sounds and Society: 60 Years of Music, Political Activism and Social Change’ is accompanied by the exhibition Auditory and Optic Themes in the Shaping of a Nation.

It was a nearly packed house at the Institute of Jamaica’s Lecture Hall in downtown Kingston, as the presenters – University of the West Indies cultural studies lecturers, Dr Sonjah Stanley Niaah and Isis Semaj, as well as Director/Curator JaMM, Herbie Miller – commanded the attention of the audience in their talk on Jamaica’s music and its cultural significance.

Call and response to the social realities

In their presentation, the speakers linked the music to the pulse of the general populace with its call and response effect to the social realities of the day. The session was moderated by journalist and broadcaster Dionne Jackson Miller.

The panelists acknowledged the integral part of the socio-political struggle that music played in shaping Jamaica as a nation, advancing the point that the early beginnings of reggae music was a move to express and fight against the oppression of the day. This year’s Grounation series will examine Jamaica’s 60 years of political independence, accomplishments, and challenges in its quest for social and political freedom.

At the forefront of this year’s staging is the concept of music as a political tool. The insightful lectures, conversations, displays and performances are expected to tap the root of the purpose of music, and how music, wielded in the hands of great thinkers, conveyed the experiences of a people striving for their cultural, political and social liberation.

Over the years, Grounation has explored the themes of African aesthetics in Jamaican popular culture, the role of the Chinese in the development of Jamaican music, dancehall as a liberating ethic, and the drum and its significance to Africa and its diaspora.

Now in its 11th staging, Grounation aims to continue the tradition of community outreach, utilising culture and reasoning, to play a part in transforming Jamaican society from the dismal conditions too many of its people bear to a society more caring and compassionate.