Durrant Pate/Contributor

Plans are well advanced for Reggae Month, which is celebrated each year in February in Jamaica as well as the birth month of Reggae legends, Bob Marley and Dennis Brown.

This year’s Reggae Month theme is ‘Rhythms of Resilience’. It officially starts on February 1, the birthday of the Crown Price of Reggae, Dennis Brown. The event kicks off with ‘Honouring The Crown Prince: A Tribute to Dennis Brown,’ a concert at Edna Manley College of the Visual and Performing Arts in Kingston.

That venue will host Reggae Wednesdays, a weekly concert featuring established and upcoming acts. Four Jamaica Reggae Industry Association (JaRIA) Master Classes looking at the reggae industry will also be held there. Ewan Simpson, Chairman of JaRIA, which promotes the annual event, first held in 2008, is excited about this year’s staging recently telling South Florida Caribbean News that the significance of the series is lost to many Jamaicans.

For him, “The ‘Month’ is intended to celebrate the reggae ecosystem, which is broader than music. It is gastronomy, art, fashion, philosophy and business. The ‘Month’ is a time when we all should pool our resources to showcase what we have to the world. We have not gotten there yet and we need the sector as well as corporate Jamaica to coalesce around this idea.”

Since it started, Reggae Month has included live shows. These shows honour the legacies of legends like Marley and Brown. Marley died in 1981 while Brown past in 1999. There are also seminars on the music’s commercial potential, as well as an awards ceremony.

Simpson highlighted that Reggae Month is still recovering following Covid-19, as the pandemic forced JaRIA to stage virtual and scaled-down events for two years. In addition, the recent passage of Hurricane Melissa, which did significant damage to the island nation, has not made things easier but Simpson sees a silver lining in the clouds.