With music’s landscape now existing primarily in the digital space, the Jamaican music industry is being challenged to implement educational and business solutions to aid in creating a framework for the growth of its product.

While bringing to light many of the gaps and loopholes within the industry, as well as the many issues faced by artistes, speakers at the recent Jamaica National (JN) Talking Reggae symposium also placed possible solutions on the table.

Many of the panelists agreed that, to create a framework for the growth of Jamaican music, an infrastructure for music education should be introduced at the early childhood level.

Dr Sonjah Stanley Niaah, cultural studies and music academics lecturer at The University of the West Indies (UWI), Mona Campus, who sat as one of the symposium’s panelists, explained that first immersing people in music education at the tertiary level does not prove ideal.

“You can’t target people at the tertiary level when it comes on to music education, and I think that where we have some work to do in this country, is to put in the kind of infrastructure we have in sport, for music,” she said.

“Once you go into a basic school or primary school in Jamaica, you go into a house. This is why there is an easy trajectory to the Olympics, there is training. And I want to see that for music. We can’t have musically trained teachers teaching accounts. There must be that kind of infrastructure for music.”

In addition to building infrastructure that targets music education from the early childhood level, panelists also agreed that tapping in from a business point of view and pursuing professions from this field, could also help with the growth of Jamaican music.

Ewan Simpson, chairman of the Jamaica Reggae Industry Association (JARIA), also underscored another issue at large within the entertainment system – the lack of information within the industry, which has led to the outsourcing of professionals for matters concerning entertainment.

Simpson stated that Jamaica has the ability to become a mega state where entertainment and cultural production is concerned, as the island already boasts a robust intellectual property regime.

However, in order to achieve prospects of ‘top notch’ intellectual protection and to avoid forms of exploitation, it is imperative to give regard to the island’s skillset.

“One of the things that we need to be able to do is to give regard to the skills we have and to elevate the skillsets that we have to the highest order,” Simpson said.

Segueing into education, Simpson added: “We have to allow our children to understand that there are so many different options [in entertainment. Law is one of them, engineering is another one of them, marketing… finance, production, logistics, all of these things go into ensuring that we can actually be a mega state… .”

Entrepreneurs in the creative space, unlike many others, continue to face a challenge when it comes on to receiving support from financial institutions which contributes to the staggered growth of the Jamaican music industry.

Gillan Hyde, deputy managing director at JN Bank, shared that entrepreneurs in the creative space continue to face challenges with receiving monetisation of intellectual property and accessing credit.

However, at present, Jamaica National, in an effort to mitigate this issue, has vowed to focus more on the creative sector to meet their needs.

“We want to zone in on our creative sector to include our artistes of course, and really try to ensure that we design products to meet their needs,” she said.

She furthered: “Of course, ensuring that through our local and international partnerships we develop financial products with guaranteed programmes that provide access to collateral, so that we can immediately solve that challenge that they have… . And so there are a variety of things that we are going to be [doing] this year and expect that this will support and serve the sector in a very useful way.”