Reggae Month for this year is behind us, but International Reggae Day (IRD) is approximately a month away. This year’s observance of the annual First of July media festival celebrating Jamaica’s rich cultural legacy, history, and global impact of the music, comes at a crucial juncture.

In response to the latest marketing challenge for Jamaica, the IRD organisers in a press release stated that the 2010 July 1 virtual media event is designed as a Red, Gold and Green I Love Jamaica campaign and global reggae party.

This has been the most challenging period of our music since the birth of Andrea Davis’ brainchild in 1994, and that include, its rebirth in 2000, following a four-year absence from 1996.

Nine years ago, internationally renowned musicologist Roger Steffens declared that it was a critical time for the IRD celebrations, but that has paled in comparison to today’s realities.

“I think 2001 International Reggae Day comes at a critical juncture for reggae music, because the world has grown tired of slackness and is sweeping it away. And now is the time for the resurgence of conscious music to come forward because the world not only is ready, but it needs that message desperately,” Steffens said back then.

Fast forward to the present time for an update to see how much things have changed or how little has taken place. Sunday Observer solicited a comment from the California-based Steffens.

“I think a more valid question might be: What exactly constitutes ‘reggae’ in 2010?” was the caustic response of the 68-year-old New York-born reggae archivist.

“It’s been a catch-all phrase for Jamaican music for a long time now, encapsulating everything from ska forward. The two forms that are most prevalent in the outside world are dancehall/rap and ska/rock steady/reggae from the Golden Era,” the music historian stressed.

Continuing his analysis, Steffens added, “Today, these forms have become a universal language, mastered by everyone from Australian aboriginals, native Hawaiian and New Zealand Maori adherents, to Russian, Polish, Filipino, South African, Nigerian and countless other nationalities.”

A keen observer of Jamaica’s musical trends for many years, the author, lecturer, editor further elaborated. “With many of the great founding stars no longer with us, it is up to outsiders to preserve and enhance the form, because lately Jamaica has failed to produce more than a few artiste, capable of breaking big internationally. It’s a natural evolution, impinged by difficult visa restrictions and a huge movement against the so-called “hate artistes” who refuse to stop chanting their homophobic obsessions, thereby tarnishing everyone else in the field, making it ever more difficult for them to find work abroad.

“I feel that my remarks almost a full decade ago have been at least partially vindicated in the sense that the glorification of violence in much of dancehall music has helped to lead to the situation in Tivoli Gardens today.

“Instead of seeking common ground and overstanding, violence seems to be the first recourse instead of the last in this Iwah (hour), urged on by clueless ranters inspired by hate and not love. Love is the essential element in Rasta beliefs, and it will be the conscious artistes who help steer a way out of this unfortunate chaos that has engulfed the birthplace of Jah Music.

“Andrea Davis’s annual International Reggae Day provides a wonderful way for people around the globe to share the vibes at the same time, and reassert the power of reggae music to help change the world.”

Observer columnist and a director of the Jamaica Reggae Industry Association (JARIA) Charles Campbell has also shared similar views on the state of the music. “I have been saying, for the last six months or more, that we face a problem in Europe in general. The fact of the matter is that the very same constituency that supported reggae music at its birth, that liberal segment of the society that supported the liberation of the black man, that supported the liberation of women, that supported the liberation of Africa and all the colonised nations, those big issues have now more or less been accomplished. And so that liberal segment of that population has now moved to the liberation of what they deemed to be the sexually oppressed,” Campbell said when asked for his perspective on recent developments in the music industry.

“And so you have many politicians in Europe,” he went on, “that are practicing homosexuals. They control some very powerful positions. Be it Italy, France, Germany, Britain. And they have been elected by the people … Artistes have to now determine whether they want to be revolutionaries, quote unquote, or they want to be commercial artistes.”

It is in this climate that the IRD Media Festival to be hosted by Jamaica, highlighting the best of Jamaica and global reggae culture, will take place. Participating Jamaican media include the Jamaica Observer, IRIE FM, BESS FM, KOOL FM, HITZ FM, FAME FM, RJR, Power 106, Newstalk 93, KLAS FM, Roots FM, TVJ, HYPE TV and CTV.

Talents featured for July 1 include Bob Marley & the Wailers, Toots and the Maytals, Peter Tosh, Dennis Brown, Black Uhuru, Sly & Robbie, Marcia Griffiths, Beres Hammond, Maxi Priest, Luciano, Barrington Levy, Mutabaruka, Beenie Man, Shaggy, Sean Paul, Third World, Steel Pulse, Aswad, Gentleman, Matisyahu, UB40, the Police, among others.

Special countdown features will be co-produced with interested media for broadcast on July 1 as treatment of these listed to provide insight into the Jamaican story as told through the music, about its creators and for its fans, at home and abroad.