JARIA Stages Honour Awards Sunday at Pegasus

The Jamaica Reggae Industry Association (JARIA) is promising a night of spectacular entertainment at its inaugural Honour Awards on Sunday, March 1, at the Jamaica Pegasus Hotel, New Kingston.
The JARIA will recognise artistes, musicians, sound systems, producers and engineers who have contributed to the development of Jamaica’s music industry over the years at the event.
In an interview with JIS News, JARIA member Trevor Nairne, revealed that the intention is to present a classy awards function.
“It’s going to take the form of a cabaret to the world, and the concept is to place the awards and the performances in [international] club settings,” he said.
One of the main features of the event is the celebration of the impact of Jamaican music internationally, and most of the music on a consistent basis happens in clubs across the world. On this occasion, in order to emphasise the significance of the music as it is performed internationally, each performing segment will take place in a selected club overseas, for example in New York, Paris, Germany and Japan, he explained.
The setting and the imaging for these segments will be enhanced by a number of video projections, to create the ambience and the setting of the international spaces, said Mr. Nairne.
Eleven persons will be honoured on Sunday, two from each of the categories as well as the presentation of the JARIA Lifetime Achievement Award.
The honorees will be treated to performances by Freddie McGregor, Gramps Morgan, Tanya Stephens, TOK, A.J. Brown, LUST and Dean Fraser’s All Star band. Additionally the performances will have themed segments, such as ‘Humour in the Music’ featuring General Trees, Professor Nuts and Lloyd Lovindeer; ‘Celebrating Women in the Music’ by the Kingston Ladies (Pam Hall, Keisha Patterson, Leba Hibbert); a tribute to Dennis Brown; and Dancehall cabaret.
In addition to the glitz and glamour, the Honour Awards will also serve as the platform for the official launching of JARIA which according to Jacqueline Lynch-Stewart, chairperson of the Bob Marley Foundation and a JARIA member, emphasized as important to the future of Jamaica’s music industry.
“Well, what I pray is that we will come together as an industry and sustain JARIA; that all of us will get involved and stay with it, because I really believe that, as an industry, for us to be taken seriously by the society and for us take ourselves seriously, we have to get under this umbrella,” she commented.
“We need an umbrella, and I hope that all of us recognise that JARIA can be the umbrella,” she asserted.
The Jamaica Reggae Industry Association is a non-governmental, non-profit organisation which had been given the task of organising events for Reggae Month 2009. Its main objective to reposition Jamaica at the centre of the global Reggae movement and culture, commencing with the process of repatriating “our birthright and patrimony.”
The Honour Awards, an invitation only event, is expected to host some 500 music industry players and special guests.