BY BALFORD HENRY Observer senior writer entertainment—
The finalists in the 2023 Jamaica Festival Song competition with Minister of Entertainment and Culture on Olivia “Babsy” Grange. (Photo: Karl Mclarty)
Another season for the annual Jamaica Festival Song competition comes to a close today and the songs selected for the finals this year seem destined to make it a close run for 2023.
It is not surprising that this year’s contest is attracting a much wider and larger audience than the 2022 edition celebrating Jamaica’s 60th anniversary of Independence, as the competition seems to have shaken off the ghost of a little-known entrant, Sacaj, and her song titled Nuh Weh Nice Like Yard.
On the other hand, the good thing about this year’s contest is the fact that the artistes and their writers and producers, who didn’t piggyback on an old and over-played Jamaican sentiment, but all 11 entries seem good enough to become the winner.
This year’s competition is already back to where it started in 1966, just four years after Jamaica’s Independence and in terms of the line-up of very talented artistes and a variety of real Jamaican music, including mento, ska, reggae, rocksteady, dancehall, and everything else Jamaicans are dancing and singing to, making it safe to say that things are back to normal.
Incidentally, there are usually 12 finalists in the competition, but this year there is one less, and that is Anthony B, who stood down the opportunity in preference to pursue renewed interest abroad for his latest single, Wind Me Up.
It certainly would be worthwhile to see Anthony B challenging Eric Donaldson who was onstage trying for his eighth festival song title with Reggae Jamaica, while seeking to build on his reputation as the grandfather of the contest, but it just has not happened.
This year’s winners will earn $3-million in prize money he would earn with
The competition kicked off at the Courtleigh Auditorium in New Kingston on July 6, and ever since then the telephone lines have been left open to the fans to vote for their favorite contestant as many times as they want.
Minister of Culture, Gender, Entertainment and Sport Olivia “Babsy” Grange, at the launch, sang the praises of the selection committee, led by producer/label boss Gussie Clarke, which chose the qualifying entries.
“The… selectors did an excellent job, as well as the entrants themselves who chose songs which reflect the diversity of our culture and the variety that our genres always offer,” she said.
“So there is something there for everybody. It also reflected the age span for younger and older folks. There was representation also in terms of persons with disabilities as well as what was reflected in the feeling of the Diaspora,” she acknowledged.
Interestingly, it was a visually impaired, elderly singer named Sherlette Black, with the stage name Princess Black, who got the noisiest response for her entry Big Up Mama JA, co-produced by Shavane Daley and which seems a serious favourite for the title.
Leading record producer Donovan Germain, who sat on last year’s selection committee, pulled out of the committee to accommodate a trio of singers/songs he has produced this year: Slashe’s (Donald Anderson) Best In The World; Shuga’s (Mitsy Campbell) Dancing Same Way; and Jamaican-born/Canadian-based Juno Awards singer Exco Levi’s Feel Like Home.
In terms of mento music, there is Lady Denna and the Whole Note Mento Band’s Little Paradise, which she co-produced with Sherman Wright; the Mento Tones’ (Charles Evans and Denzil McCollin) Jamaica Mi Born and Grow, produced by McCollin; relative newcomer Av&ane (Owayne McCaulsky), who did Jamaica A Mi Yaad, which he also produced; and Prince Fabulous (Richardo Miller) No Weh Like Yard, produced by Varel Dixon.
Other finalists are: Hot Rod (August Hibbert), a relative of the late Toots Hibbert who lost his incisors while dancing onstage, pleading for peace with his entry More Love; and N-Rich’s (Randeen Thomas) Sovreignty.
The finalist took over the lunch hour concert scheduled for the Bank of Jamaica, Nethersole Place, downtown Kingston, on Friday, July 28 as a curtain-raise to the grand final scheduled for the National Indoor Sport Centre today, Saturday, July 29.
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