THE Gardens of the Jamaica Pegasus Hotel in Kingston were transformed on Thursday evening for the sixth staging of the Excellence in Music and Entertainment (EME) Awards. The night started out with a packed house and great promise but by the time the last award was announced, at minutes past 1:00 am, there were quite a few empty seats.

Perhaps organisers could look at announcing some of the winners before, instead of making so many onstage presentations.

That aside, there were some really good performances in between the awards presentations. Raquel Fairclough kicked off the event with a powerful rendition of the gospel classic How Great Thou Art, followed by Dance Xpressions and a moving tribute to Haiti entitled No Hope In Giving Up from Dez-I Boyd.

But what turned out to be the best entertainment of the evening was the Studio One tribute where the young generation artistes performed songs catalogue.

Timmi Burrell kicked off that segment with a good delivery of Horace Andy's Skylarking. Jodi-Ann Pantry gave a spirited performance of Dawn Penn's No No No, with Hezron showing why he is rated among the best singers when he performed the Dennis Brown classic, If I Follow My Heart.

Cherine Anderson had the crowd cheering from the minute she opened her mouth to belt out the first notes of First Cut Is The Deepest. Romain Virgo held his own with Alton Ellis' I'm Still In Love With You Girl with Nadine Sutherland closing out that segment in style and a lot of fancy footwork with Marcia Griffiths' I Feel Like Jumping.

Gramps, who took home the award for Album of the Year had the crowd in a sing-a-long with his hit song Wash The Tears before calling on India.Arie, the two lit the stage up with their sizzling performance.

India.Arie in receiving her International Friend of Reggae moments after her stage performance said, "I look quite Jamaican if I may say so myself" while declaring that she considers herself "a member of the Morgan Heritage clan".

Other great performances for the night came from Lady Saw with I'm A woman and Toots Hibbert who was one of the honourees for Role Model of the Year.

By the time international act Ultimate hit the stage there weren't a lot of patrons left to appreciate his performance.

One had to question the wisdom of the Bonner brothers going on stage one after the other instead of taking the stage together at minutes to 1:00 am.

Among the big winners for at the EMEs were Vybz Kartel who took home the trophies for Recording Artiste of the Year, Song Writer of the Year and DJ of the Year; Ding Dong with Song of the Year with Holiday and Collab of the Year with the same single; Sinjay of the Year Male went to Movado while Queen Ifrica took it for the female. DJ Nicholas took home the trophy for Gospel Artiste of the Year and Sean Paul grabbed International Artiste of the Year.

-- Cecilia Campbell-Livingston

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