POSITIVE dancehall music will share the stage with roots and culture reggae at this year’s staging of the popular event, Western Consciousness set for Paradise Park, Smithfield Road, Westmoreland on April 30.

Whereas previously, the King of Kings-promoted musical spectacular focussed on the cultural side of the music, for this year, the 23rd anniversary staging, the organisers note that the show will be a celebration of good over evil and will salute positive dancehall.

“Many people are of the idea that we hate dancehall. We nuh hate dancehall, we love dancehall because a deh so it all start. We might hate things that happen in the dancehall. We might hate the negativity. We might hate to see these people leading my children astray using the dancehall. We hate all of those negativity. But as far as dancehall is concerned we love it. And so this year we are focusing on positive dancehall,” promoter Worrell King said at the launch on Tuesday in the Gardens of the Jamaica Pegasus Hotel in St Andrew.

“To show to Jamaica and to the world, because our event goes worldwide, with no if and but, with joy in my heart, we will be presenting Rodney Price (Bounty Killer) on Western Consciousness,” King announced to tremendous applause.

To the uninitiated, when an artiste shed the moniker by which he or she is well known and is promoted by his given name for this event, there is a commitment that performance will be in keeping with the concept of this wholesome family affair.

“Sometimes that distinction might appear artificial,” executive director of the Broadcasting Commission Cordel Green admitted, “but I think everybody who is being honest and objective, must acknowledge that in recent times, even the more extreme dancehall artistes have been shedding themselves of gratuitously violent and explicit lyrics. And it is something that we need to acknowledge. Because when they were doing the reverse, they were criticised heavily. That is a positive development. We have to encourage these artistes to continue on the positive trajectory by embracing them on stages where they would previously have been excluded,” Green concluded.

Among the other dancehall acts are Tanya Stephens, D’Angel, Toya, and Harry Toddler.

The line-up of vintage and contemporary performers include Stevie Face, I-Octane, Droop Lion, Romain Virgo, Hezron, Lutan Fyah, Hero, Iyahblazze, Freddie McGregor, Mighty Diamonds, Dubtonic Kru, Uprising Roots, King Sound and Iley Dread.