ByYasmine Peru – STAR Writer—

Platinum-selling, Grammy Award-winning dancehall and reggae artiste Shaggy believes that racism has played a huge role in the success, or lack thereof, of Jamaican music.

However, his advice to those in Jamaica’s muisc industry is not to dwell on it.

Shaggy was one of the panelists at the Jamaica Music Conference’s Reggae Month panel discussion, which aired on Sunday on PBC Jamaica and other online platforms.

“The biggest reggae bands right now are the white bands, they have the biggest tickets, the biggest sales. You are sitting there to yourself and saying, ‘What is it they are doing that we are not?’ Now, let’s face it, if anybody sitting in here thinks that racism has not played a part in it … yuh mad … you are sick,” declared Shaggy, who has scored with hits such as It Wasn’t Me, Boombastic and Angel.

He stated, “If you look at this history of what reggae has done, even tek for instance the [band] Police. Sting seh to me seh him used to sit and watch Steel Pulse and Aswad and Bob Marley and was mesmerized back in the early days. He went and did a hybrid version of it which became the Police.”

Shaggy noted that although the Police “did great music and was massive”. the fact is that they got on radio because they were white.

“If you think about it, the biggest reggae band dem, UB40, Ace of Bass, they are all white reggae bands. You look at somebody like a Collie Budz who probably play more festival than Gramps Morgan who have more hits than him. Look at the great Bob Marley, arguably the ‘king of reggae’, his biggest chart position song is I Shot the Sheriff by a white guy. So, don’t think it’s not a part of it, what we should not do is dwell on it.”

Totally engaging the audience, Shaggy pointed out, “All of us out of Jamaica are all light-skinned. Shaggy, Bob Marley, Sean Paul … a three brown bredda, a nuh coincidence that. We are not saying that we are not talented people.”

He lamented the fact that reggae and dancehall music seem to be static.

“My only problem is that we are not seeing numbers. We are not seeing the streaming numbers, we are not seeing people crossing. We have Afrobeats, which is a birth child of dancehall and reggae. Afrobeats is doing huge numbers. Reggaeton is doing huge numbers. Yuh have trap, which is hip hop, that is doing huge numbers. All of these are birth child of danehall and reggae, yet dancehall and reggae have the lowest numbers,” he said.

His charge to his audience was: “We are all one … keep going really hard, keep going really strong and know that we have the best culture.