Earlier in the year, I read comments from Johnny Gourzong, executive director of Reggae Sumfest, indicating that this year the festival might have to scale back on overseas acts due to a shortfall in sponsorship. Based on the line-up announced at the launch last Friday, however, it seems that, with the return of Red Stripe as a platinum sponsor, at least to some extent, the hurdle has been overcome. The inclusion of Chris Brown on Friday, July 23 and Usher on Saturday, July 24 has certainly enhanced the two international nights of Sumfest this year.

The re-entry of Red Stripe as a sponsor of stage shows is not only symbolic but a well-needed boost to the pool of funds dedicated to marketing events in Jamaica. Two years ago, when the company withdrew from supporting live music events — “in protest of the increasingly sexual, explicit and violent content of the lyrics” — I wrote that, in my view, this was a tactical error in their marketing strategy. No doubt, it was also a major fallout for the entertainment sector.

Unfortunately, it was a twin-edged sword. As it turned out, the fallout in their sales was very significant — reportedly a reduction in the region of between 30 – 40% of product sales. Red Stripe, for the first time in its history, actually lost market dominance to Heineken, in Jamaica.

For a long time, Red Stripe has been a major perennial sponsor of live shows and festivals. When Red Stripe decided to make a determined push in marketing their brand internationally, they joined forces with the Sunsplash World Tour to promote the product in North America. There are many other such examples. As brand manager Safia Cooper puts it, “The brand and company has been and remains integral to the development of the music and entertainment industries.”

Simultaneously, the Digicel Sumfest marketing strategy and campaign, using the Next Generation produced by Demarco and featuring Agent Sasco (a more conscious Assassin) and I-Octane, is a very novel approach which should provide a fillip to the promotion of the festival.

Sumfest is very important in the cultural life of Jamaica. For this reason, I sincerely wish for the organisers a very successful year. Having stayed with this through the thick and the thin for 18 long years, they deserve it and so does the economy of Montego Bay. Coincidentally, Sumfest is being staged the weekend after the limited state of emergency ends in Kingston and St Andrew and St Catherine. I am looking forward to and anticipating some incisive lyrics, especially from our dancehall artistes, in reference to this, and other developments in Jamaica and the music industry.

This brings me to this year’s theme for International Reggae Day (IRD), which was celebrated on Thursday, July 1. It was titled ‘The Role, Power and Responsibility of Music and Media to Change Jamaica and the World’. This could not have come at a more opportune time in Jamaica. Recently, the media has been doing a very good job of coalescing and promoting a nascent national movement against public corruption and the nexus between politics and criminality. The music fraternity must now take the baton and run with it. As Dr Michael Barnett urged, the music “should be utilised as a positive force in Jamaica, and indeed the whole world”.

Founder and producer of IRD, Andrea Davis, summed it up best when she said in 1994, “The violence and instability that have plagued and rocked the nation recently, has left the country struggling to find peace, purpose and hope. Reggae music is one of the few Jamaican resources that can be used to quell the anxiety that has gripped the nation.” International Reggae Day was an excellent precursor to a summer of live events and festivals in Jamaica and across the world in which the reggae genre is fully integrated. The content of the performances of our reggae and dancehall artistes will tell us if we have truly closed a chapter and turned a page in the history of our country and music.

Email:che.campbell@gmail.com