Industry players at the Copyright forum exchanging pleasantries. From left, lecturer at Edna Manley School of music and musician Ibo Cooper; Laurent Manderiux, professor of intellectual property, University of Milan, Italy; Information and Culture Minister Olivia'Babsy' Grange; Dr Vamus James, professor of economics at the University Of Technology; and Miss Carol Simpson, attorney -at -law.

The 2008 celebration of International Reggae Day (IRD) was one of information sharing, historical reflections and musical performances, marking the 40th anniversary of the worldwide genre. The day started with the first of two major events. It was a lively and highly informative forum on copyright at the Terra Nova, put on by Jamaica Arts Holdings (JAH), whose CEO, Andrea Davis, put forward proposals for amendments to the Copyright Act.

At the forum, which heard from a number of important players the in music industry at home and abroad it was revealed that the copyright sector contributed US$464.7M, or eight per cent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP), or 3.09 of the Labour Force.

The disclosure came from professor of economics at the University of Technology (U-Tech) and author of World Intellectual Property Office (WIPO), Copyright study, Dr Vanus James, who spoke on The Contribution of Jamaica's Copyright-based Industries in the National Economy.

Other speakers of note were WIPO Senior IP (Intellectual Property) Expert, professor Laurent Manderieux, professor of Intellectual Property at the University of Milan, Italy.
Endorsements came from the president of the Jamaica Federation of Musicians (JFM) Desmond Young, and lecturer at the Edna Manley College School of Music, Michael 'Ibo' Cooper.

That was the morning activity which preceeded a IRD Symposium at the Undercroft at the University of the West Indies, Mona, in the afternoon. Organised by the Reggae Studies Unit, there were musical presentations before and after a panel discussion around the evolution of reggae music. Panalists were Herbie Miller, Dennis Howard, Julian 'Jingles' Reynolds, Rocky Gibbs the son of legendary studio operator/producer Joe Gibbs, Ibo Cooper and Sajoya.

But the first provocative comment came from Herbie Miller, when he noted that although the music fraternity is celebrating 40 years of reggae music, for him the genre started with the release of Catch-A-Fire by the Wailers' early 1970s' album with Bob Marley out front on vocals.

"We celebrate the 40th year of reggae music as a calendar-event it seems at this moment. However, thinking historically, I prefer to mark my historic periods by events.... So for me reggae entered the international scene with the release of Catch-A-Fire," Herbie Miller said.

Well-known Dub poet Mutabaruka greets veteran journalist Julian 'Jingles 'Reynolds at the IRD symposium.

"Prior to that, of course, we had the soundtrack, The Harder They Come, and the film. So we had people like Wilfred Edwards among others who made an impact. But the impact that reggae made, the moment that Time Magazine put the Wailers on the cover and addressed the music as not just a music, but as a culture, as a way of life that came with Rastafari, philosophical, religious and other kinds of messages. A music of liberation that's encompassed everything that represented us as Jamaicans. Is at that moment that I would myself date reggae music," added the former manager of Peter Tosh.

Released in 1973, Catch A Fire established the band as international superstars. It peaked at No 171 and 51on Billboard's North America Pop Albums and Black Albums Charts respectively. It is mumber 125 on Rolling Stone's list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Yime.

Veteran entertainment journalist, Julian 'Jingles' Reynolds, after briefly touching on the early challenges the music had to overcome, warned against the practice of grouping all of the popular genres as reggae. "At the beginning, those who were making this music and behind it as an industry, didn't have an easy time. We tend to forget now because of the fact that it's 40 years hence, and lot of changes and development have taken place, it was really difficult," he reminded the symposium.

Then he said, "I want to charge you all here though with one thing. I notice that there is a tendency, maybe because Jamaica is a small country, to group all of our popular music under the umbralla of reggae. I think it's extremely important as an historical fact...that we distinctively identify the genres and keep them separate. Dancehall is not reggae, reggae is not rocksteady, ska is neither rocksteady nor reggae. Mento is none of them. They are streads of the musical evolutiuon that will run from one to the other, but there are distinct music pattern development."

Wipa Demus skanking away during his short stint at the IRD symposium. (Photos: Garfield Robinson)

Ibo Cooper came with an interesting perspective of when the "child become the parent".

After giving the Latin definition of reggae, which is "of the king", he went on to explain that after the rocksteady era, the unprecedented happened. That is the rise of Bob Marley with the Catch A Fire album. "In the rock steady era when we go abroad a man seh what you playing, we say reggae because we called everything reggae. But the sound was changing....later on when it became more popular, even what came before it, is called reggae. So now when you go into a record store in the States you have a reggae shelf. And on the reggae shelf, you have ska, mento, rocksteady and so on. So the child became the father, a so the whole thing go."

Musical items were performed by the Grenadian reggae artiste, Zeby Lion, Jamaica's History Man and Wipa Demus among others.

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